2016 Chateauneuf du Pape Reine Bois
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Tasting notes
A strapping, richly layered wine, teeming with blackberry, black currant and boysenberry paste flavors wrapped in a lively black licorice note. Stays juicy and energetic throughout, with light bramble and graphite nuances checking in on the very long and powerfully built finish. 90 cases imported.
Critic scores
Average Score
Josh Raynolds, Vinous
Joe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
The 2016 Chateauneuf du Pape La Reine des Bois is a monumental effort. Packed and dense, full-bodied and richly tannic, it's completely absorbed the 30% oak. It's 80% Grenache, older vines from the lieux-dits of La Crau and La Nerthe. Blueberries, licorice and Mexican chocolate are carried on a velvety mouthfeel through an indelibly long finish. It's a tour de force, so young, but so tempting. Tasted three times, with consistent notes.
Deep vivid ruby. A highly perfumed bouquet displays ripe red and blue fruit preserve, incense, garrigue and cola aromas complicated by a vibrant mineral quality that gains strength as the wine opens up. Sweet, seamless and broad in the mouth, offering impressively concentrated Chambord, boysenberry, floral pastille and spicecake flavors that show superb clarity and lift. The blue fruit and floral notes power a strikingly long, spicy finish that's shaped by rounded, even tannins. This wine's marriage of heft to finesse is really impressive.
Smooth, succulent fruit with much more flesh and generosity than their Dame Voyageuse cuvée. Very fine tannic powder on the finish. Savoury liquorice notes to finish.