2022 vintage
Mas de la Ruade
Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France · Winemaker: Jean-Baptiste Villar · 40 members
What happened
The vintage, in five moments.
- Third consecutive dry winter — JB cut all but one irrigation pass for the Syrah.
- Flowering was clean; set was tight. Yield came in 22% below the five-year average.
- Picked parcel by parcel from September 12 through September 30.
- Whole-cluster fraction jumped to 70% — the Crew voted on stem ripeness from barrel-room photos.
- Bottled unfiltered, unfined in November 2023. 218 cases.
The final wine
What we bottled.
The 2022 Mas de la Ruade Châteauneuf-du-Pape is dense and aromatic — violet, crushed pepper, garrigue, a backbone of Mourvèdre that will show itself in year five. JB describes it as a wine that remembers the wind. At Cellarmaster tier the Crew received twelve bottles plus a half-bottle of an experimental Grenache blanc from a single row on the north-facing corner.
From the Crew
“I'm a Barossa drinker. I joined expecting big. What arrived was something I'd never drunk before — lighter, sharper, more mineral. I spent the next year buying older Rhône just to understand what I was tasting.”
“JB livestreamed the pick at dawn. Two hours, no music, just the sound of shears. I watched the whole thing from a hotel room in Denver.”