Chateauneuf du Pape

Last week, my American Wine Society Chapter held a tasting of Chateauneuf du Pape wines.
The meeting was held at a member's home in Napa. (If you ever read this, thanks Marc and nancy!)

Each participant brought a bottle of CNDP and an appetizer to pass and our host gave a short talk on Chateauneuf du pape wines in general. I think we had 13 wines but 2 were duplicates so there were 11 different tastes. The wines ranged from a 1992 (orange rim, slight tannin, all fruit gone) to a a couple of 2003 wines that were pretty good to a few newer 2009 vintages that were still slightly tannic.

In general I can't say that I am a fan of CNDP. I like the main grapes of the blend, Grenache, Syrah, Mouvedre, but i still find the blend to be a little rustic and course. Syrah of course has high tannins - supposedly one of the 4 highest tannin grapes in the world along with Cabernet sauvignon, Tannat and Nebbiolo. Maybe the CNDP producers haven't figured out how to mellow them out without losing flavor in the process. In reading about these wines it seems that the winemakers throw the stems into the tanks as well adding more tannins. This may be part of the problem.

By the way, I took a chance and decided that one COULD serve fish with red wine so I took a tray of California roll sushi and my claim is that it goes well with the not-too-thick CNDP wines. Plus easy to get and a good finger food.

It was surprisingly hard to find a bottle of Chateauneuf wine. I wen to 2 different grocery stores, and 1 liquor store , that usually have pretty good selections. I wasn't finding anything. I finally found 1 bottle and bought it, hoping that it was a decent wine. It wasn't. It was a 2009, still too young and had kind of harsh tannins.

Did you ever wonder HOW Chateauneuf got its name ( The pope's new house/castle/palace )?
These things intrigue me so I am posting some research that i did below.

========== the following is mostly taken from Wikipedia with some rewording ==============

During the dark ages a conflict rose between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor over who held power over temporal life. the HRE was the protector of society and the Church, but the Pope usually was responsible for acknowledging and crowning him. After the arrest of a French Bishop by Phillip IV in 1301, the Pope issued the bull Salvator Mundi, retracting all privileges granted to the French king by previous popes, and a few weeks later another one with charges against the king, summoning him before a council to Rome. In a bold assertion of Papal sovereignty, Boniface declared that "God has placed us over the Kings and Kingdoms."

In response, Philippe wrote "Your venerable conceitedness may know, that we are nobody's vassal in temporal matters," and called for a meeting of the council of the lords of France, who had supported his position. The King of France issued charges of sodomy, simony (selling indulgences), sorcery, and heresy against the Pope and in turn, summoned him before the French council.

The Pope was preparing a bull that would excommunicate the King of France and put the interdict over the country, and to depose the entire clergy of France, when in September of 1303, William Norgaret the strongest critic of the Papacy in the French inner circle, led a delegation to Rome, with intentionally loose orders by the king to bring the pope, if necessary by force, before a council to rule on the charges brought against him.

Nogaret coordinated with the cardinals of the Colonna family, long standing rivals against whom the pope had even preached a crusade earlier in his Papacy. (Think of a Hatfield / McCoy feud with the papacy as being the prize. Or even better, Capulet and Montague only without the love story). In 1303 French and Italian troops attacked the pope in his home town, and arrested him. He was freed three days later by the population of Anagni. However, Boniface VIII, then 68 years of age, was deeply shattered by this attack on his own person and died a few weeks later.

Following the impasse during the resulting conclave to elect a new pope and to escape from the infighting of the powerful families that had produced earlier Popes, the Roman Church looked for a safer place and found it in Avignon, which was surrounded by the lands that had been donated to the church years earlier. (Historical note: Southern France wasn't really part of France at this time. parts belonged to Spain and Parts to Italy). During the conflict between the Italian rivals, French Cardinals were able to elect one of their own as Pope.

Clement V (1305–1314) became the next pope. He was born in Gascony in southern France, but not directly connected to the French court. He decided not to move to Rome but instead took up residence in Avignon. For the next 72 years this became the home of the popes. They drank Burgundy wine. (Note, the vineyards on the slopes of Burgundy's famous escarpment the Cotes d'Or, developed and maintained by the Clergy, also had a hierarchy. The bishops at received the less prestigious wines from the shallow soils at the top of the slopes, The cardinals' wine came from the sometimes too rich soils at bottom, the Pope's came from the best vineyards in mid slopes). However the rest of the clergy drank and promoted the local wine around the Popes summer home near Avignon. And thus it began.

john