Château Maucoil Châteauneuf-du-Pape Esprit Red 2010 ~ Southern Rhone, France

92/100 Wine Enthuasiat
92/100 Wine Spectator
92/100 Robert Parker, Wine Advocate
15.5 Bettane et Desseauve
92/100 Wine Spectator (2009 vintage)
90/100 Robert Parker, Wine Advocate (2009 vintage)

Wine Enthuasiat "Superripe and lavishly oaked, the 2010 L'Esprit is loaded with jammy cherry fruit topped with vanilla cream. It's full bodied, plushly textured and slightly warming, with some chewy wood tannins on the finish."

Robert Parker, Wine Advocate "A step up and a gorgeous, elegant and layered effort, the 2010 Chateauneuf du Pape Esprit de Maucoil offers loads of blackberry, black raspberry and cassis to go with underlying spice-box, licorice and earthy notes. Full-bodied, seamless and pure, with a textured, rich profile, it’s a knockout effort to drink over the coming decade or longer."

Robert Parker, Wine Advocate "The finest wine of this trio is the 2009 Chateauneuf du Pape l’Esprit de Maucoil. It offers classic kirsch liqueur, loamy soil, pepper and garrigue notes as well as a long, fleshy, medium to full-bodied personality. With impressive purity and overall balance, this seductive Chateauneuf du Pape." (2009 vintage)

Winemaker "Strong colour with garnet nuances. Deep on the nose,infused with Kirsch-like and jammy centuating its complexity. On the palate, aromas of black fruit and garrigue scrubland are elegantly underpinned by polished tannins and remarkable freshness. This is a wine with a great deal of breadth, an elegant, rich smoothness, and good development potential which will come out over time.

Château Maucoil has been under the care of several different illustrious wine growing families over the centuries, but it is now owned and managed by the talented winemakers Frederic and Benoit Lavau. With the consulting advice of famed French winemaker Stephane Derenoncourt, the Lavau brothers have been making stellar and highly awarded wines and today are one of the few producers to continue to cultivate all 13 permitted grape varieties permitted by the Châteauneuf-du-Pape regulations.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a historic village between the towns of Orange and Avignon, in France's southern Rhône Valley. It is famous for powerful, full-bodied red wines made predominantly from the classic southern Rhône grape trio: Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre. These three varieties are behind the vast majority of the appellation's red wines, although a total of eighteen are approved for use – a mix of red and white grape varieties.

A Southern Rhône Red Blend refers to a wide range of grape varieties blended together in the southern reaches of the Rhône Valley of southern France. While the blend could theoretically consist of any of a wide range of grape varieties, it is usually made up of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre, in varying proportions, typically with Grenache and Syrah as the dominant partners.