Almost a shame that we drank this wine as a light starter, but it worked so gloriously well like that. Light and perfumed with a smidge of smokiness and herbs, with balanced sweetness on the palate from the fruit. Not weighty but chock full of flavour nonetheless.

More than a few of us exchanged glances when this wine was brought -- most of the group is no fan of white Rhone. But we all would readily admit that this bottle was quite good. Fresh without the oily texture and with a surprisingly high amount of bright acidity to boot. This has good weight on the palate, but never becomes overbearing.

Incredibly fresh and clean; this is far cleaner and livelier than wines one quarter the age (I'm looking at you, 2007). Clearly plummy and ripe, with more of a earthy tone than funk. Clean. Plenty of acidity, and the fruit sweetness here makes this still an amply compelling bottle of wine. It held up incredibly well over the course of the evening.

Maderized.

We kept waffling back and forth on this, but I was pretty confident that this was corked. It smelled and tasted that way on alternate sniffs or sips.

Readily my favourite of the older Beaucastels. This was a full and voluptuous wine, still showing plenty of fruit from the ripeness of the vintage. Large-scaled but elegant at the same time, this didn't have any funk or dirty elements; in fact this drank incredibly clean. More plummy on the fruit profile than anything, but there is still structure (mostly from the acidity) to give this wine shape. Outstanding.

A little dirtier and funkier than the preceding wines, somewhere between 1981 and 1978 seems to be where the Beaucastel wines became dirty (at least, based on the wines tonight). More of what you would expect from Beaucastel, whereas the earlier wines surprised by how clean they were. Nonetheless, readily drinkable and enjoyable, even if the dirt and earth play a more prominent part than I personally prefer.

Initially when I opened this, I found it a little thin and sour, and the fruit profile didn't really seem to stand up to all the acidity. A few hours in, the wine had definitely fleshed out, and there was far more fat and meat on the bones. A very elegant wine, this has a sinewy vein of acidity that starts on the midpalate and runs to the finish.

Glorious Châteauneuf-du-Pape; probably among the best I've had (at least, this bottle). This was ripe, dense, and big, but in all the right ways. It is ample yet proportionate. Plenty of plummy sweetness here, but all held together by the tannic and acidic structure. Gorgeous intensity and concentration, this is an excellent example of a very big wine done correctly.

There is an intense green note on this wine. It seems like it comes from pyrazines, but it is also somewhat minty. Rustic and coarse (in a good way), this doesn't feel as if it has the necessary fruit for the structure. If I had to envision what the old school Cornas could be like, this would come pretty close (sans pyrazines). Not a bad wine, but the greenness gets to me here.

I think I was in the minority in that I preferred this to the more rustic 1996. This shows much cleaner, and without any of the green pyrazine notes that are so distracting in the slightly older wine. This is still rustic and sturdy, but with less dirty funk so that the fruit expression is a little more pure. This bottle seems younger than the other one I've had; this was between primary and secondary.

Somewhat high-toned and aldehydic on the nose, with some alcohol coming off (though the next flight really put me in my place with that). This shows more along the lines of meat and black fruit; a squat and sturdy wine, but with excellent purity of fruit. Despite some commentary that the older Sorrel wines can be dirty (not really my own experience), we all agreed that this was a very clean example of one.

An intense, structureless mess, with in-your-face jamminess and an utterly unappealing lack of acidity. The fruit is far on the black side of the spectrum, and has been extracted in an over-the-top way. Age has not been kind to this; it's an amorphous, shapeless mass.

As bad as the 2005 of this was, this was somehow even worse. Like the 2005, this is an amorphous wine, lacking any sort of delineation or structure. No redeeming acidity whatsoever. Instead, it shoves an ample pile of rotting/decaying prunes in your face. Time has not been kind.

Never had a bottle of wine with so much VA.

This is not good. Age has ravaged the fruit in this wine, leaving a decaying, brown, pruney mess. Jammy, but jam made from windfall plums that had been on the ground for a week. Another bottle that reinforces my belief of what a miserable failure the 2007 Châteauneuf-du-Pape vintage was.

I've been very curious to try this bottling for a very long time, so I was extremely happy to cross paths with this tonight (and doubly so given the brilliant vintage). The label says 15.5% abv. No way I would have guessed that when tasting this. This is certainly a very potent and packed wine, with plenty of extract, structure, and fruit, but you never notice anything besides the scale because everything is so balanced. A lovely mix of red and black fruit that leads into some leather and spice flavours on the palate. This has the structure for extremely long-haul aging; I would love to put some of this in my own cellar to revisit in a decade or two.

I think there's something about how the 2002 Huet corks are bad and lots of the wines are premoxed. Guess we got lucky with this bottle. What a beautiful wine; so fresh and bright with just a hint of wooly chenin character followed by a sunny exposition of fruit. Just mildly sweet, the stone fruit notes are balanced by the acidity and minerality.