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Parker 96 points: Bonneau’s 1998 Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee Speciale is something along the lines of 16.5%-plus natural alcohol with about 4-5% residual sugar. It is an amazing wine that tastes relatively dry, with huge extract of blackberries, roasted meats, and sweet strawberries and cherries intermixed with licorice, smoke and pepper. It makes a massive introduction on the palate and expands vertically, as if it were a skyscraper. It is intense, rich, and compelling, and no doubt capable of lasting 30-40 years. (The 1990 Cuvee Speciale, which has much in common with this wine, is still an infant in terms of its development.) This is a remarkable, but controversial wine.
It is always difficult to figure out just what is going on here. For over 15 years, my annual tasting through the hodgepodge of cellars and ancient barrels, foudres, and tanks in this underground maze known as the caves of Henri Bonneau is one of the gustatory highlights of the year. Yet the only thing that seems certain is that whatever comes out in bottle is usually much better than what you taste out of barrel. Henri Bonneau, who is now working in close conjunction with a new collaborator, Michel Roman, to help in doing some of the work in the cellar as he edges into his late sixties, called 2004 a “correct year.”