2023 Domaine de la Vieille Julienne Cotes du Rhone Lieu Dit Clavin

This is where the whole estate started. In 1905, Jean-Paul Daumen's great-grandfather bought a piece of ground called Clavin. Everything Vieille Julienne became grew out of it.

Today Daumen runs one of the most respected addresses in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It's the northernmost estate in the appellation, farmed organic since 1998 and biodynamic since 2000. His Châteauneufs are collector wines. His Côtes du Rhône from the home vineyard is not a lesser thing. It is the same hands, the same dirt, the same obsession, sold for a fraction of the price.

Clavin sits on sand and red clay right around the winery, just outside the Châteauneuf line. The vines are old — averaging around eighty-five years — and the yields are tiny. The 2023 is Grenache-led, around 80%, with Syrah and Mourvèdre. A handful of field-blended old-vine varieties go in the way they always have. It's destemmed, fermented on native yeast, macerated about three weeks in concrete, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. Nothing added, nothing stripped out.

The trade has a name for wines like this: baby Châteauneuf. Same character, same power, younger and cheaper. Daumen's Hauts Lieux Châteauneuf runs four figures a case. This is the same winemaker at Côtes du Rhône money.

I'd buy it by the case and not overthink it. Grenache this good, this cheap, doesn't sit around.

Open it with anything off the grill. It does not need an occasion.