Tardieu-Laurent, Rhône Valley New Arrivals

Michel Tardieu and his son Bastien, with the help of consultant Philippe Cambie, continue to make a rich, full-bodied, concentrated style of wine from throughout the Rhône Valley... Michel's wines all show beautiful purity of fruit and impeccably balanced profiles. As a whole, 2016 was a great great vintage in the Rhône, and you see that extraordinary quality and consistency in this lineup..

"Michel Tardieu is a seriously committed vigneron with a penchant for locating excellent parcels of vines. He works with a mix of both traditional (varying the amount of destemming) and modern techniques (aging in new and used oak barrels) that lend the wines a density and clarity to their fruit without sacrificing their terroir. During their lengthy élevage the reds are blended and then racked back into used oak, thus minimizing the overt influence of new barrels. The wines age well, with the wood treatment melding into the body of the wine to let a kaleidoscope of spice, fruit, toast and mineral notes develop together. In recent years, the lineup has really excelled & they are among the most vivid, precise and exciting wines being made in the region today."
— James Molesworth, Wine Spectator

"The 2016 vintage was truly extraordinary for the Southern Rhône and is a vintage that readers should buy with abandon. This is the greatest young vintage from the Southern Rhône Valley I’ve ever tasted, both in terms of quality as well as consistency. I’ve never seen so many traditional cuvées achieve such high quality nor so many estates produce such truly extraordinary wines. While these are ripe, concentrated, and exuberant wines, they also show an incredible purity of fruit as well as weightless, sensationally balanced profiles on the palate. They are complex, powerful wines that satisfy both the intellectual and the hedonistic parts of the brain. Rhône lovers will be comparing the 2016s, 2010s, and 2007s long into the future, and you will want these wines in your cellar."
— Jeb Dunnuck