2015 Domaine Jerme Gradassi Chateauneuf-du-Pape

A Michelin-starred chef walked away from his acclaimed Avignon restaurant to make wine in a tiny cellar carved into the rock beneath the ramparts of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and the result is one of the most soulful, unmanipulated expressions of the appellation you can buy. That chef is Jérôme Gradassi, and he brings a cook's ingredient-first obsession to the old Grenache and Mourvèdre vines his grandfather planted.

His methods border on monastic: no pumps, no machines, no additives. Whole clusters ferment on wild yeasts in ancient tiled concrete tanks, punched down by hand. When fermentation ends, he empties the tanks the only way he can, by hand, with a bucket and a rope, a job that takes a week. The wine then rests untouched in old, neutral barrels until bottling. It is the polar opposite of the heavy, syrupy style that has overtaken so much modern Châteauneuf.

The stellar 2015 vintage gave Gradassi a powerful core of dark fruit, and nearly a decade in bottle has softened its grip: it is savory, elegant, and squarely in its drinking prime today. Traditional, hand-made Châteauneuf is nearly extinct, and from a vintage like 2015 it almost never surfaces. There isn't much. Don't wait.