CRITIC REVIEWS
Jeb Dunnuck
The two special cuvees are both as good as wine can get. The 2007 Châteauneuf du Pape la Combe des Fous is the more pure, elegant and seamless of the two, but it’s still a huge wine that has overflowing notions of smoked meats, ripe black currants, toasted spice, liquid smoke and garrigue. It’s utterly seamless on the palate, with fine tannin, no hard edges and incredible purity of fruit. It’s firing on all cylinders but certainly has another decade or more of prime drinking.
Robert M. Parker, Jr.
The following three wines are as great as money can buy, and all three represent extraordinary achievements. The 2007 Chateauneuf du Pape La Combe des Fous (meaning “Valley of the Fools”), which comes from a specific vineyard known as Les Combes, was cropped at extremely low yields of 20-25 hectoliters per hectare. Atypically for a Chateauneuf du Pape, it contains a high percentage of Vaccarese (10%), along with 60% Grenache, 20% Syrah, and 10% Cinsault. The Grenache was aged in tank, and the other varietals spent time in old small barrels or demi-muids. Explosive aromatics include spring flowers, boysenberries, blueberries, black raspberries, graphite, and charcoal. A powerful wine with great depth, full body, and an endless finish, it is exquisitely pure with not a rough edge to be found. It is the equivalent of liquid haute couture. The Musigny of the southern Rhone, it possesses extraordinary aromatics followed by a wine with the texture, length, and multilayered mouthfeel that are the stuff of dreams. Looking back at my tasting notes, the first thing I wrote was “whoa!” Deep plum/purple to the rim, this wine should evolve for 20-25 years, but it is already remarkably accessible. The vintage’s freshness as evidenced by the lack of any excessive heat and cool nights has given an aromatic singularity to the 2007s that is largely unprecedented in my tasting experience.