“Vivid ruby. Highly perfumed red fruit, potpourri and peppery spice scents show very good clarity. Sappy and precise on the palate, offering sweet raspberry and floral pastille flavors and a hint of spicecake. Closes on a smoky mineral note, displaying silky tannins and strong, floral-driven persistence.” Vinous

"Looking at the classic cuvee, the 2015 Gigondas is a wine that readers should buy by the case. A blend of 70% Grenache, 20% Syrah and the balance Mourvèdre and Cinsault, it offers up gorgeous notes of black raspberry, fruit tart, spice and incense in a medium to full-bodied, ultra pure, seamless style that just begs to be drunk. It will keep for over a decade.." Vinous

"Proprietor Julien Brechet is redefining Gigondas through his exploration of selections parcellaires, which are essentially monovarietal. Le Lieu Dit and La Colline are Grenache, Le Plateau is Mourvèdre and Les Routes is Syrah. The blended cuvée remains an assemblage of four varieties and represents an outstanding value. Brechet is pleased with the quality he's been able to achieve the past few vintages but says he's always striving to do better. On this visit, he poured a couple of older vintages so we could look at his progress, saying that he felt he'd made mistakes at times in the past. Of the La Colline, Brechet says, "Before it was impressive, now it's expressive." One of the keys to the quality he was able to achieve in 2018, he says, was the use of destemming, which he now varies considerably from year to year (in 2017, he used as much as 30% whole clusters). Brechet considers 2018 to be a year that favored Grenache, comparing it to 2006 and 2012. That said, I remain impressed by his Les Routes (Syrah), which has become one of the Southern Rhône's greatest examples of that variety—worth noting is that the genetic material is a sélection massale from Fonsalette, which is said to originate from cuttings provided by the Chave family. Equally impressive is the Châteauneuf-du-Pape Brechet bottles from a tiny patch of 100-year-old vines farmed for him by his brother Laurent (Château de Vaudieu). "The signature of the estate is the finesse," Brechet says." RP