Appellation: Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Cuvée: Rouge.
Colour: Red.
Grapes: Grenache 85%, Mourvèdre, Syrah and Vaccarèse, around 5% each.
About: a classic of the Appellation and an outstanding southern French wine, an outstanding example of Grenache Noir. Every year the wine gets better and fully reflects the vintage. It’s fabulously rich, yet always refreshing and very elegant. Always great harmony and balance.
Vines
Location: 14 parcels, mostly in the north of the Appellation, on sandy soils, in Cabrières and Maucoil as well as Arnesque to the south between the Domaine and village of Châteauneuf.
Size ha: 8.
Age: vines planted between 1900 and 1970.
Soils: mainly galets roulés on a limestone-marl base, clay-limestone and some sandy soils.
Exposition: mostly north facing.
Altitude: 50 to 80m.
Training: gobelet.
Farming: organic with obsessive attention to adapting to changing circumstance, retaining humidity in a dry year, or aerating the vines in a humid year.
Average yield hl/ha: 25.
Climate: Mediterranean.
Winemaking
Made in concrete tank, using whole bunches, wild yeasts, no additions except very minimal sulphur, the varieties co-fermented, during about 3 weeks, with temperatures controlled to no more than 33ºC and with a very gentle extraction. The wine is matured 18 months in concrete tank. The wine is bottled unfiltered and unfined.
Vintage Notes 2015
A classic year.
Yield hl/ha: 32.
Harvested: .
Bottles produced: 25,000.
Date bottled: 2017-07.
Alcohol %: 14.75.
SO2 Total: 55.
Tasting: lavish, honeyed aromas of dried fruits, dried and fresh herbes de provence, plum, cherry, black olive, cacao lead into a firm, dense yet vibrant mouthful of rich fruit, with surprisingly silky tannins and cool freshness.
Vintage Notes 2017
A year with no problems other than lack of rainfall, another hot and dry year, with wines that display perfume, sweet fruit, super ripe tannins, low acidity.
Yield hl/ha: 30.
Harvested: .
Bottles produced: 25,000.
Date bottled: 2019-07.
Alcohol %: 15.26.
SO2 Total: 36.
Tasting: classic Charvin. Rich, dense, complex, with surprising freshness and trademark coffee, cacao, molasses and honey aromas marking the cassis and cherry fruit.