2016 Chateauneuf-du-Pape Charles Giraud Famille Isabel Ferrando (St. Prefert) Magnum

A perfect wine that's up with the top handful of wines in this incredible vintage, the 2016 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Collection Charles Giraud (60/40 Grenache and Mourvèdre) boasts a sensational nose of currants, cured meats, kirsch, exotic spices, and sandalwood. Deep, full-bodied and powerful, yet with an incredible sense of elegance and purity, it just glides across the palate and, despite its awesome intensity, it never seems heavy or over the top. Give it 2-3 years, and it will keep for two decades or more. 2021 - 2041.

The 2016 Chateauneuf du Pape Collection Charles Giraud is a 60-40 blend of Grenache and Mourvèdre, fermented with all the stems. There's a hint of cocoa, but raspberries and strawberries are the dominant fruit flavors in this lively, zesty wine. Trace notes of mint, lavender and tea leaf add complexity. Full-bodied and velvety in texture, it's intensely concentrated and rich yet not overly heavy or overripe (it weighs in at 15.5% alcohol), with a lingering, elegant finish. It's a tour de force that should age for two decades or more, and it will be interesting to see how it compares to the perfect 2010 after it's had a few years in bottle. 2020 - 2040 .

Intensely concentrated, yet light on its feet, this is all about the purity of fruit, sensuous, sexy, velvet textures, and expansive layers of fruit in the finish that must last close to 60 seconds. There is a depth of flavor that invites your palate to explore the wine again and again looking for what else might happen! The wine was made blending 60% old vine Grenache with 40% Mourvedre.

Deep lurid ruby. Hugely fragrant raspberry liqueur, boysenberry, garrigue and Asian spice aromas show outstanding clarity and pick up a smoky mineral flourish with air. Deeply concentrated but elegant as well, offering pliant red and dark berry and candied lavender flavors that reach every corner of the palate and show no rough edges. Cola and spicecake qualities emerge on an impressively long, subtly tannic finish that emphatically repeats the blue fruit note. The blend of richness and energy here is something else.

This has a large core of well-steeped plum, blackberry puree and warm cassis flavors, inlaid liberally with ganache, graphite and Turkish coffee notes. There's a wide swath of tobacco and roasted alder detail through the finish, matched by racy acidity for balancing focus. This is very deep and very long, capturing the intense yet fresh fruit feel of the vintage to a T. Best from 2020 through 2040. From France.-J.M.