2021 Château des Tours Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge

Château des Tours 2021 Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge is made by Emmanuel Reynaud, who farms forty hectares of organically tended old-vine Grenache in the Vacqueyras area just north of Sarrians. The Reynaud family purchased the estate in 1935, and Emmanuel has run it since 1989 with the same exacting standards his family applies at Château Rayas. The vineyards are manually plowed, harvested weeks later than neighbors to ensure full phenolic ripeness, and the resulting wine is a textbook expression of Southern Rhône terroir without manipulation. Emmanuel Reynaud is nephew to Jacques Reynaud of Château Rayas, and the two estates share a philosophy: minimal intervention, old vines, and late harvest dates that allow Grenache to develop complexity rather than jammy fruit. The soils here are galets roulés—the rounded river stones that store daytime heat and radiate it back to the vines at night—mixed with sandy clay. Fermentation is natural, aging takes place in neutral foudres and older barrels, and nothing is added or removed. The 2021 vintage saw a cool growing season that preserved acidity and structure, making this one of the more age-worthy recent releases from the estate. The wine shows red cherry, garrigue herbs, cracked pepper, and a fine tannic grip that suggests this will develop gracefully over the next decade. It drinks well now with grilled lamb, duck confit, or a slow-braised daube Provençal, but it will reward patience. Serve it slightly cool, around 60 degrees, to let the herbal and mineral notes come forward. This is a wine for the table, not for scoring points—Emmanuel Reynaud has never courted critics, and the estate remains one of the most undervalued sources of serious Grenache in the Southern Rhône. Château des Tours 2021 Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge is available now at Off Premise Chicago, 1128 W Armitage Ave in Lincoln Park, for in-store pickup, local Chicago delivery, or nationwide shipping.