This “Rarest of the Rare” charity dinner benefitted the Hospice du Rhône and the Johns Hopkins Cancer Clinic, and it was a great night for Rhône wine enthusiasts. Colorado retailer Rhonda Black put together quite a syndicate of Rhône wine enthusiasts, including a few winemakers, Chris and JoAnn Cherry and Justin and Heather Smith (the Paso Robles Rhône Ranger group), and Rhône importer, Eric Solomon, and his winemaker/wife, Daphne Glorian, and 16 other hungry wine lovers. It was a night that will be difficult to duplicate in anyone’s lifetime. I pillaged my cellar to come up with what I believe are some of the greatest Rhône wines ever made. We began with the obligatory Champagne to rinse the palate after the delicious hors d’oeuvers (especially the cornmeal-crusted oysters prepared by Chef Cindy Wolf). The first course included gloriously rich, concentrated Montrachet-like 2003 white Hermitages, all unreal in concentration. Most shocking was that the non-French ringer, the 2001 SQN Rien Ne Va Plus, held its own against these monster wines, whose intensity and richness is almost off the charts.

We then moved to one of Châteauneuf du Pape’s most Burgundian-styled wines, the wines of Rayas, which emerge from a cool, sandy terroir in a so-called “hot” area. The only wine in this flight that was not made by the late Jacques Reynaud was the 1998, which appeared weak when tasted alongside the wines fashioned by the late master. The 1995 flirts with perfection, but it is still a young wine. The 1990 appears to be at that magical peak, and while it can vary by a few points one way or the other, it is a magnificent wine. At my end of the table, most tasters seemed to prefer it over its siblings. The 1989 revealed unreal depth as well as great promise, and it still appears much younger than the 1990. This bottle was even more backward than the one I had six months ago. The 1988 seemed to get lost, exhibiting much higher acid and a cooler climate style. I have had better bottles of this effort, and I believe it is a better wine than it showed at this event. The biggest surprise was how beautifully the 1985 performed. I loved it from barrel, but then it went into a dormant stage, and only re-emerged over the last 7-8 years. Of all the Rayas cuvées, it was the most sumptuous.

The next flight was a horizontal tasting of 1989 Châteauneuf du Papes that had been stored in my cellar since the early nineties. The civilized Beaucastel Châteauneuf du Pape 1989 was not nearly as animalistic as it can be. The sleeper in this flight was the 1989 Pontifical Châteauneuf du Pape, which performed even better than I remembered.  The 1989 Marcoux Vieilles Vignes was pure perfection, as was Henri Bonneau’s 1989 Réserve des Céléstins. These were as great as Châteauneuf du Pape can be, but not far behind was André Brunel’s first vintage of his famed Cuvée Centenaire, the 1989, as well as the fully mature 1989 Chapoutier Barbe Rac. Perhaps because it was so much younger, the 2005 Clos des Papes Châteauneuf du Pape was over-whelmed in this flight of older Châteauneufs. All the 1989s possessed much more concentration than the 2005.

We then switched gears into a flight of some of the most concentrated, singular, and distinctive wines I have ever tasted from the northern Rhône, the 2003 red Hermitages. One could argue whether these are perfect wines or not as all of them were stunning, but I thought Guigal’s 2003 Ex Voto, Chapoutier’s 2003 Le Pavillon, and Chave’s 2003 were all as profound a red wine as anyone could taste. Although young, they are remarkably concentrated and incredibly pure. The vintage provided amazing extract and richness (because of the minuscule yields) as well as high alcohol (15-16.5% is not unusual), but the wines carry the alcohol gracefully, no doubt because of the hallowed terroir of Hermitage. These efforts will have a long life (40-50 years), but they are already accessible because of the sweetness of the tannin and their low acidities.

We finished with a superb flight from one of the most traditional Châteauneuf du Pape producers, Domaine du Pégaü. The three vintages of Cuvée da Capo were all extraordinary old vine Grenache-based, stunning, sumptuous wines that offered oodles of garrigue, kirsch, pepper, incense, and spice. The 2000 was the most evolved, the 2003 the broadest and richest, and the 1998 the most classic. We also enjoyed a pristine magnum of 1990 Cuvée Réservée, a wine that has drunk beautifully since age 3 or 4, never going through a hard or graceless period.

The finale was the Tesseron family’s exquisite 1929 Cognac. I rarely drink hard alcohol or after dinner drinks such as this, but it was unreal in its silkiness and exquisite bouquet. I have never before tasted a Cognac of such magnificence.