2020 St Joseph le Paradis St Pierre
Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
Vivid purple. Powerful, smoke- and spice-accented blackberry, cherry-cola and violet aromas show excellent delineation and pick up olive and allspice notes with aeration. Sweet and broad in the mouth, offering deeply concentrated dark berry liqueur, vanilla, smoked meat and floral pastille flavors and a suggestion of exotic spices. The impressively long finish features bright mineral and floral notes and velvety, even tannins that sneak in late. Two-thirds whole clusters and about 10% new oak.
Critic scores
Average Score
James Lawther MW, jancisrobinson.com
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
The flagship from this estate, the 2020 Saint Joseph Le Paradis Saint Pierre comes from a single parcel of old vines and granite soils and will spend 15 months in demi-muids. It's always the most granite-influenced wine in the lineup, and the 2020 has a deep purple hue as well as a tight, focused, mineral-drenched style in its ripe black and blue fruits as well as peppery herbs, violet, and smoked game-like aromas and flavors. I love its overall balance, and it has plenty of structure and a great finish, as well as the focused, elegant style of the vintage. It's going to benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and keep for 15+.
A blend of old-vine fruit from the lieux-dits of Paradis (in Mauves) and Saint-Joseph (in Tournon), approximately half of the 2020 Saint Joseph le Paradis Saint Pierre was destemmed. Tasted from barrel, it displays expressive floral notes and vibrant red-berry aromas. It's medium to full-bodied, not as profoundly concentrated or dense as the preceding two vintages, but it is silky, rich and long.
95% Marsanne, 5% Roussanne. Pure, stone-fruit aromatics with a creamy edge. Volume and gras on the palate, the unctuosity matched by some stony freshness. Palate-filling, ripe but with a dry finish. Worth waiting a couple of years. (JL)