Crozes Hermitage Domaine de Thalabert, Domaine Paul Jaboulet Aine 2016

The 2016 Crozes Hermitage Domaine De Thalabert offers a rocking (and classic) bouquet of ripe black fruits intermixed with notions new saddle leather, pepper, garrigue, and hints of bacon fat. This ripe, medium to full-bodied, silky wine has remarkable purity, is already complex, and finishes with serious length. Drink it over the coming 10-15 years.

The classically styled 2016 Crozes Hermitage Domaine de Thalabert boasts savory scents of black olive and leather. Medium to full-bodied, it's plummy and rich, creamy and ripe but savory and earthy, not jammy at all, with a lingering, velvety-textured finish. It drinks well now, but it should continue to evolve and drink well through 2035.

Inky colored, the 2016 Crozes-Hermitage Domaine De Thalabert will check in behind the sensational 2015, but is nevertheless a gem of a wine. It offers classic blackberry and currant fruit intermixed with lots of peppery herbs, damp earth and peppery, olive aromas and flavors. With medium to full body, excellent concentration, and ripe tannin, it will keep for 10-15 years.