2016 Brotte Chateau De Bord Cotes du Rhone Villages Laudun 750 ml

The Everyday Red from Parker’s  “Serious Estate”

Rarely do all the numbers line up like they do today: The 2016 Brotte Château De Bord Laudun is undoubtedly one of the greatest Rhône Valley bargains we’ve ever offered—and to be sure it was the real deal, we met the owner for dinner in Avignon, France this past December. At $25, from Wine Spectator’s 99-point vintage, this is an incredible, dangerously easy to drink full-bodied red, with ripe dark fruits and spices, made by the legendary French icon Philippe Cambie.

We’ve had our eye on Brotte ever since Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate gushed, “This serious estate is run by Laurent Brotte, with consulting help from Philippe Cambie. The wines offer high quality across the board and can represent fantastic values.”

Cambie is, of course, Parker’s “Michel Rolland of the Rhône,” and his 2010 “Winemaker of the Year.” His wines, as you’d expect, have earned an incredible spate of earned 98-100 point scores from Parker.

With great anticipation, we arrived early to Avignon’s La Fourchette bistro, just as a light rain began to fall, filling the air with that unmistakable wet cobbled stone smell of ancient streets in Europe. The lights in the restaurant were still bright, and the bartender offered to let us sit at the bar and sip on pilsners while we waited for our host. We thumbed through Wine Spectator online, and a just-published 2016 Rhône Valley vintage report.

“I was struck by how vividly ripe the wines were, yet also detailed and fresh,” wrote James Molesworth in Spectator, who made a giant declaration a few sentences later: “Overall, I give the Southern Rhône a rating of 99 points, its highest mark ever.” Robert Parker’s former Rhône critic, Jeb Dunnuck, agreed wholeheartedly: “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.”

Both Dunnuck and Molesworth’s assessments align with our own feeling that the 2016s are stupendous and otherworldy—a real notch above the highly-lauded 2015s, delivering true “bang for the buck,” as Molesworth noted in another article we came across, writing specifically about Domaine Brotte—our host for the evening at La Fourchette.

Right on some divine cue, Thibault Brotte arrived and greeted us with energetic fanfare. We had been so consumed reading Spectator that we failed to notice the restaurant's transformation into a dim, warmly-lit room, with candles illuminating white tablecloths.  

Thibault was a regular patron of the bistro, and as we took our seats, corks were popped and Brotte’s history unfolded, wine after wine, course after course. Family-owned, the first vineyard was planted in 1880, and today, five generations have made wine under the Brotte name.

For the 2016 Brotte Chateau de Bord, Thibault had divined for us the ultimate pairing—Avignon’s famous beef stew. As the Grenache-Syrah blend opened in our glass, it became the talk of the table. Sumptuous dark cherry liqueur notes rising to meet brown spices, chocolate, and violets. The rich and savory stew, steeping in red wine sauce, was elevated by the pairing, as fresh dark-berry-infused wine with zip and energy washed down bite after bite.