Château de Beaucastel : Hommage à Jacques Perrin 2022

Notes of cooked blueberries and liquorice on the nose. This has great palate weight and density, it’s so savoury. The tannins are really searching, and the acidity is driving. A big tannic seat, and a lovely sense of vibrancy and freshness to the fruit. This has enormous presence, it's a big, powerful, dense vintage of Hommage that will age for a very long time. Around 60% of the blend comes from old-vine Mourvèdre from the Courrieux vineyard. Grapes are destemmed, fermented in tronconic wooden vats using natural yeasts after a brief cold maceration, with regular punching down.

The stunning 2022 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Hommage à Jacques Perrin comes alive with precise notes of sandalwood, licorice, dried herbs, crushed violets, blackberry jam and wild strawberry. Peppery subtleties add further complexity. Combining mind-boggling intensity with impressive verticality, the full-bodied 2022 is one of the wines of the vintage. Closing with a refined finish that lingers for over two minutes, readers should ideally wait to approach this outstanding Hommage until at least 2032.

In serious contention for wine of the vintage, again, right off the bat, with its deep hue, it's looking good. Powerful, concentrated, deep and intense, the nose explodes with its array of dried flowers and spices. Dark in color—in fact, this is the darkest wine of the vintage—the aromatic profile shows a complex array of black cherries, black raspberries, blackberries, smoke, thyme, and peppery herbs. The palate is even better with its seamless layers of spicy, deep, dark red and black fruits. There is lift, length, purity, and intensity that are impossible to ignore. The wine blends 60% Mourvedre, 20% Grenache, 10% Syrah, and 10% Counoise. Like all the great vintages of Hommage, this is a wine for patient collectors as you need to give it at least 10 years of aging, and 20 would be even better! Though, for Hommage, this will deliver pleasure relatively early in its life. Drink from 2030–2055.

Lastly, the 2022 Châteauneuf Du Pape Hommage A Jacques Perrin is another 2022 that has some resemblance to this estate’s 2009. It just screams Mourvèdre with its wild aromatics of bloody red and blue fruits, herbes de Provence, rare meat, and peppery, spicy nuances. These all carry to a full-bodied yet still balanced, elegant 2022 that stays focused and precise on the palate, with building tannins and a salty finish that makes you salivate. I know there's a tendency to hide these away and think that they're never ready to drink, but they offer incredible pleasure with just short-term cellaring, and this will be no exception.

Black fruits, spices, wild scrub herbs, thyme: a ripe yet fresh nose. The oak is nuanced, the palate is powerful, tempered by Mourvèdre’s tannic texture which brings extra length. We applaud the wine’s breadth on the palate; there’s no need to rush.