1998 Domaine Chante-Perdrix Châteauneuf-du-Pape Selection Les Reflets – this is a tasting note and a bit of a puzzle. This wine (a half case of which was ‘lost’, i.e. somehow uncatalogued in my cellar) carries a neck label that says “Selection Les Reflets”
Apparently several producers (according to Livingston-Learmonth) “formed an association of 11 growers who pooled their resources for bottling and storage of that bottle stock, and was a second version of the Les Reflets grouping, the latter featuring notably the Clos du Mont-Olivet, Les Cailloux, Domaine de la Solitude and the Nicolet domaine of Chante-Perdrix”. It is unclear in what way the wines bottled there were a ‘selection’ and whether they were any better or worse than bottles not labelled that way.
In any case, the wine is fully mature now, and shows lightening edges and a medium depth of colour in the glass, lighter than many of the 98s are today and a bit further along. The nose is showing some ripe mature fruit and a hint of gaminess.
Still, a creditable showing and I was reminded that I hadn’t recently tasted the wine sharing the other half of the cellar shelf with it, the 1998 Clos des Papes which I also should revisit in the near future.