Clos des Papes Châteauneuf du Pape 2000

Just shy of three decades ago I slipped into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, took hold of the wheel, and headed south.

Almost thirty years later, the wisdom of this course of action seems up for debate. The car in question was 23 years old, only a few years younger than I was at the time, and I had just replaced the worn-out engine with a reconditioned unit. I have modest mechanical skills, and provided the grunt to the project, one of my brothers providing the brains. The ‘new’ engine was carefully run in and – in my defence – for those few hundred miles it performed faultlessly. My destination, however, was Châteauneuf du Pape, a round trip of more than 1,800 miles. A baptism of fire.

The trip, shall we say, did not go to plan.

The perhaps inevitable and ignominious breakdown came – because I know someone will be interested – not far from a small town named Rolampont, south of Reims, where the local Citroen garage was run by a very competent mechanic named Serge. One engine strip-down and rebuild later, and I was underway again, arriving at my destination a mere eight days after departing northwest England. Châteauneuf du Pape thus became the first appellation in the Rhône Valley I visited, and as I worked my way back north I also ticked off Gigondas, Cornas, Saint-Péray and Hermitage (looking back, I have to wonder why I missed out Côte-Rôtie – lack of time, or lack of knowledge?), before then striking north for Fleurie in Beaujolais, then Meursault, Beaune and Chablis.

In Châteauneuf du Pape I drove up the low hill which overlooks the town to view the scant remains of the papal residence for which this settlement and appellation is named, and of course I visited a couple of local domaines. One of which was Clos des Papes. I was instantly hooked on the wines, and followed the domaine for many years afterwards. My memory of the visit itself, however, is at best sketchy, more accurately non-existent. In those pre-Winedoctor days, I didn’t take many notes, and my pre-digital photographs are tucked away in an album somewhere in my attic. Probably.

Fortunately, the Avril family, long-term proprietors of this domaine, are rather better at keeping records than I was, which is why we know so much of the domaine’s history, back to the 19th century. It was created by Paul Avril (1873 – 1962), the first Avril to sell his wines under the name Clos des Papes, although municipal records suggest the family were present in the region for several centuries before this. The domaine was then passed to a son Régis Avril (1901 – 1987), and then another Paul Avril (1937 – 2009) who many visitors to the domaine during the latter years of the 20th century would have met.

Today the domaine is under the direction of the next generation, Paul-Vincent Avril (born 1965) who completed his education in Burgundy before he started here in 1987. He has overseen a conversion of his 32 hectares of vines to organic viticulture, with the first certified vintages being 2009 for the white wine, and 2012 for the red wine, all signed off by Ecocert. To his credit he has continued the tradition maintained by his father and grandfather of bottling only two cuvées, one red and one white, and eschewing the Parker-era trend for bottling a variety of increasingly intense super-cuvées. As my understanding of the region and its wines grew, this would be a key feature of the Avril philosophy which appealed to me.

The red takes fruit from the majority of the vineyard (there are just 3 hectares dedicated to the white) and it is a traditional blend with typically a little more than half Grenache, a significant contribution from Mourvèdre, then Syrah and a smidge of other permitted varieties, namely Vaccerèse, Counoise and Muscardin. While the blend takes fruit from across this parcellated domaine, it is named for the vines in the walled clos which sits just to the north of the aforementioned ruined papal palace. I have always found the wines to be accessible young – perhaps this is true for all young Châteauneuf du Pape – but in truth the real rewards come with maturity.

Revisiting the 2000 Châteauneuf du Pape from Clos des Papes at 25 years of age reveals it to have a maturing hue, with a broad and fading rim. Aromatically it opens with a sweet and spicy nose, with suggestions of hung game, liquorice, black pepper, thyme and smoke. This is followed by a beautiful if slightly grained sweetness from the start of the palate, with layers of dried cherries, dark chocolate, liquorice, violets and tar, all over a dense core of peppery and textural confidence. Long, with largely resolved tannic substance, mature and lightly peppered, with nuances of sweet leather, thyme and tobacco at the very end, this is a richly polished wine with a long and appealing finish. Drink or hold. The alcohol is 14% on the label. 94/100

By the way, while my recollections of my visit to Clos des Papes three decades ago are sketchy, one fact I recall with certainty was the most recent vintage I tasted, which was 1995; I know this because I bought three bottles, and recall drinking them over the next ten-or-so years. Why only three bottles? Well, you can’t fit that much in the boot of an MGB Roadster; most of the space is taken up by the spare wheel, and with my track record I thought it unwise to leave that behind, lest a simple flat tyre had me calling on Serge’s services once more. (19/8/25)

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