Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2009 – reds

See our Guide to 2009 Rhône coverage.

There are some lovely wines among the hundreds described below but my tastings of 2009 Châteauneuf reds was not unalloyed joy and there are also wines that were a trial to taste. Summer of 2009 was exceptionally dry in Châteauneuf, which resulted in very low yields and some grapes were clearly so unusually small that there simply wasn't enough juice. Such wines tended to be dominated by very drying tannins on the particularly abrupt finish and often had a lack of real fruity core. Indeed some of these wines present an argument...