When you taste a wine so good that your knees buckle, your heart flutters, and your brain practically explodes, you know there's something special in your glass. That's almost precisely how the wine team at Mission felt this week after tasting the 2019 Domaine Chambeyron-Manin Côte-Rôtie--a wine so good, so special, and so rare that it may be the best wine we taste all year long. 

What exactly makes Domain Chambeyron-Manin so good? Let's start with the producer. 

First off, Christianne Manin and her family operate a small market offering locally-produced meats, cheeses, and produces, including a large amount of vegetables they grow themselves like radishes, spinach, chard, and a variety of lettuces. Her prowess for produce is of high renown in southern France. She also happens to make a small amount of wine.

How small? How about half a hectare!!

Yes, a teeny-tiny half hectare of 40-50 year old Syrah vines is farmed in Côte-Rôtie, of which a mere 165 total cases is made for the entire world!! Farmed entirely by hand, with hard-to-reach wines on steep slopes, the entire process of production is the definition of small artisanship.

As you might imagine, only a small percentage of that wine is shipped to the United States which means the few cases we have currently at Mission represent some of the miniscule bottles made available to American customers as a whole (not to mention the Mission staff members who are also buying this). 

What does it taste like? Like the most lushy, mouth-filling, concentrated fruit known to man, accented by violets and smoked meats, with a five minute finish that leaves you longing for more. 

Will we taste a better wine at Mission this year? Perhaps! There's still plenty of time ahead of us in 2023. But as of this moment it's our leading candidate for wine of the year. 

94 POINTS: VINOUS - Brilliant violet color. Highly perfumed, mineral-accented dark fruit liqueur, floral, olive and cracked pepper scents show excellent clarity and vibrant lift. Offers juicy blackberry, boysenberry and candied violet flavors that display fine clarity and subtly chewy texture. The impressively long, floral-tinged driven finish features discreet tannins and reverberating spice and mineral notes.