2024 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc Rhone Valley 6pk 6x750ml

Chateau de Beaucastel traces to 1549, when Pierre de Beaucastel acquired the land at Coudoulet. Pierre Tramier bought the estate in 1909, and five generations of the Perrin family have run it since. This is the house that still plants and bottles all thirteen permitted varieties in its red Chateauneuf, farms organically, and in 2006 was brought into Primum Familiae Vini, the alliance of the world's oldest family wine estates.

The white is the quieter half of that reputation, and for my money the more interesting one. Beaucastel builds it on Roussanne: eighty percent here, with Bourboulenc, Picardan and Clairette filling in around it. Roussanne is a demanding grape in the Southern Rhone. It yields little, oxidizes easily, and punishes a late picking date. Beaucastel leaned into it anyway, far enough to bottle a separate Roussanne off a parcel planted in 1909. This bottle is that commitment at estate scale.

2024 handed them the acidity the style needs. James Suckling has it medium- to full-bodied with an oily mid-palate and a peachy, caressing finish. Vinous found honeysuckle, herbal tea and pear over a neat drive of acidity, closing on mineral and wet stone. Two critics, two vocabularies, one point: weight and lift at the same time, which is the hard part with white Chateauneuf.