In his book “The New French Wine” Jon Bonné writes that Jacqueline André’s wines “are about old-fashioned subtlety,” crediting her with “quietly upholding the extraordinary quality of her family’s domaine.” André is fully worthy of this praise, and it’s never been clearer than today.
Truly great winemakers show their greatness most clearly in difficult vintages, and Jacqueline André’s 2021 results put her in that class. The 2021 growing season brought challenges of biblical proportions, with damaging frost and hail in April, followed by serial heat waves, followed by late season rains. All of this dramatically reduced yields and threw off harvest schedules.
But despite the challenges of 2021, Jacqueline André has made an elegant and absolutely delicious wine. Consonant with the dictates of the year, her Chateauneuf du Pape rouge 2021 is a wine of medium weight and mild tannins rather than huge density. Grenache always dominates the fruit in her wine, but in 2021 the distinct aromas of dried rose petals join the usual sweet wild strawberries to produce a refined and elegant glass of wine that is strikingly good.
At the warehouse tasting over the weekend this wine stopped people in their tracks with its subtlety, elegance and poise.
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André Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2021
bottle price:$65
