2018 Château de Saint Cosme Gigondas Rhone Valley 750 ml

A member-favorite producer and 100-point Southern Rhône benchmark, we’ve worked for years to secure an allocation of Saint Cosme’s standard-bearing crown jewel. It wasn’t easy, but we finally succeeded by landing the 2018, the intense violet Gigondas showstopper that Jeb Dunnuck referred to as “a drop-dead gorgeous wine that readers should snatch up.”

Saint Cosme is to Gigondas what Vieux Télégraphe and Beaucastel are to Châteauneuf du Pape: Wine Spectator dubbed it the “reference-point estate for Gigondas, as well as one of the most dynamic estates in all of the Rhône Valley, south or north.” And the 2018 displays everything that earned the esteemed château that title. 

Vibrant and spicy, with classic black plum, dark raspberry, cracked pepper, and wildflower aromas, the 2018 has a complex backdrop of clove, licorice, kalamata olive, and herbes de Provence. Structured by delineated tannins and nervy acidity and boasting a never-ending finish, reveling in a sip of the Saint Cosme reminds you of why Robert Parker declared theirs to be “some of the finest wines in the southern Rhône as well as France.”

Couple the raves with the relative scarcity, and you’d expect Saint Cosme to command a price similar to the best of Châteauneuf. But despite being one of the great wines of the world, Saint Cosme is also one of its great values—and we’ve got it for just $49. 

The Saint Cosme bottle boasts a secret code: Those labeled “Saint Cosme” use contracted vineyard sources, and only the ones that come from proprietor Louis Barruol’s own vineyards bear the full “Château de Saint Cosme” name. This Grenache-based blend comes solely from the 60+ year-old vines that encircle Barruol’s Château—and like blood from a stone, those gnarled old trunks make up for their low yields with deeply concentrated, aromatically intoxicating grapes.

The Saint Cosme estate has existed since 1416, and has been in the hands of the Barruol family since 1570. Louis took over from his father in 1992, around the time he discovered the secret behind Château de Saint Cosme’s Tortonian marl. Barruol’s property is the only land in the Rhône where you’ll find this salty mix of clay and limestone—the nearest example can be found in Barolo and Barbaresco, on the other side of the Alps. Since learning of that connection, he has focused on harnessing that precise mineral energy in every wine from his estate.

A slight, studious, modern-day renaissance man, Barruol is an expert on almost everything from history to geology, chemistry, politics, rugby, or music. When he’s not making wine, he’s practicing his cello or playing on a local rugby squad, but he still found time to convert his estate to biodynamics in 2010, taking centuries of accumulated vineyard expertise to its apex. Wine Spectator crowned him the “Genius of Gigondas” when an earlier vintage of today’s bottling landed at No. 5 on the magazine’s Top 100 list.

It goes without saying that Château de Saint Cosme has been THE producer to know in Gigondas for years now. Parker has heralded its top cru as “one of the greatest Gigondas I have ever tasted”—bold words, as he frequently posits how Gigondas at its best can equal or even surpass his beloved Châteauneuf-du-Pape.