Congratulations to the Perrin Family! 2024 Beaucastel is James Suckling's Wine of the Year.

I often tell people how remarkable the Perrin family is. For at least three generations, they've been relentlessly innovative, while still somehow being fierce guardians of tradition. They are leaders in their region while building coalitions across borders. They partner with movie stars and yet are grounded and authentic. And they make some of the best $7 wines in the world, while also making some of the best wines in the world full stop.

They have another honor to add to their long and growing list. This week, James Suckling named the 2024 Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape his Wine of the Year for 2026. I'll quote some of what James said in his announcement:

...it was an easy choice to pick the Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2024 as our Wine of the Year for 2026. It ticks all the boxes for me. It’s a classic and highly sought-after wine in nearly every vintage, and it has a global following. It comes from Demeter-certified, biodynamically farmed vineyards with a long pedigree. The estate dates back to 1549, and the Perrin family has owned the property for decades.

The Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape is beautifully made, with finesse in the winemaking and exceptional attention to detail. Plus, it’s available around the world, with production of more than 8,000 cases. Both the reds and whites are beautiful to drink young, but they also have great aging potential. I have enjoyed 50-year-old bottles in beautiful condition.

This recognition comes 35 years after their 1989 Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape landed at #1 on the Wine Spectator's Top 100 wines list back in 1991, at the time the first wine from the Rhone Valley to receive that honor. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that this established both Beaucastel and Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the upper tier of wineries and wine regions in America in a way that they never were before, or that it laid the groundwork for the later success of Tablas Creek. I still have people come up to me and tell me wistfully that they remember buying that wine for $25 per bottle and enjoying it for decades. And the wine is still singing. I had the definite good fortune to open one of the bottles my dad saved when I was back visiting family in Vermont a couple of summers ago. We opened it alongside the 1981. That 1981 was good, but the 1989 was sublime. My tasting note:

Plusher and more powerful on the nose, aromas of mocha, black cherry, mint chocolate, and soy marinade. The mouth is fully mature but still has lovely fruit: cherry and currant fruit, new leather, meat drippings, sweet baking spices, and chocolate covered cherries. Long and luscious but still somehow weightless.

The impressive state of the wines wasn't the only thing that showed the impact of the cool, damp cellar where they've lived these last three decades. The labels did too:

Back to the Perrin family. What are a few notable things they've done?

• Jacques Perrin, who ran the estate from the 1950s through the 1970s, pioneered organic farming in an era when every government agency, every farm bureau, every regional association was pushing chemicals as an answer to more production and fewer risks.
• Jacques also led the charge to find and reintroduce the traditional grape varieties of Chateauneuf-du-Pape that had been lost in the aftermath of phylloxera. It's why Beaucastel is known for using all 13 of the traditional Chateauneuf-du-Pape grapes, and why we have that collection here at Tablas Creek. I think it's very likely that some of these grapes would have gone extinct without his efforts.
• Jacques' son Jean-Pierre Perrin launched the La Vieille Ferme label in the late 1960s, which has grown to be the best-selling French wine in America and one of the best selling French wines in the world, thanks in part to the family's smart updating of the label and branding, the relentless effort to keep the quality high and the price low, and their leaning into the viral Chicken Wine phenomenon.
• Jacques, along with his second son Francois Perrin, oversaw the replanting of the Beaucastel vineyards to the late-ripening, often lower-yielding, but ageworthy and structured Mourvedre and Roussanne grapes, charting a more serious path for Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
• Led by Jean-Pierre's son Marc Perrin, the family partnered with Brad Pitt (and originally Angelina Jolie) to make and market Miraval, one of the most iconic Provence rosés, starting in 2012. That wine itself made the Wine Spectator's Top 100 the next year, the first rosé ever to achieve that honor.
• The family owns and runs l'Oustalet, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Gigondas. Francois' son Charles Perrin is the family's lead in this endeavor.
• They were co-founders of Primum Familiae Vini, a group that brings together twelve of the European wine world's leading families in support of multi-generational family enterprises.
• The way that the family chose to reimagine Beaucastel for future generations, using the materials from the site and centered around a series of rainwater-filled cisterns for natural cooling, has received awards for its innovation and sustainability, including the Prix AMO 2025 in France and the RIBA International Award for Excellence 2026 in the UK.
• All those accomplishments have led to Jean-Pierre and Francois Perrin being named Decanter's co-Men of the Year in 2014 and to the family receiving the 2018 Meininger Wine Family of the Year award.

Notice that I haven't mentioned their work here at Tablas Creek. But I don't want to leave you with the impression that they've been any less a part of our innovations, from our decision to focus on Paso Robles at a time when it was relatively undiscovered, to our decision to import new grapevine material from France, to our decision to share cuttings of those grapes with other growers, to our initial commitment to organic farming and our moves to champion biodynamic and regenerative farming in the years since.

Their example is also something that we look to in our pricing. Beaucastel is unquestionably one of the great wines of the world, and one of the leading wines of its region. And yet it's still a relative bargain at around or just under $100 retail. What would you expect to pay for the flagship wine from a top estate in Bordeaux? Napa? Burgundy? Tuscany? More than $100, to be sure. They have made the conscious choice to make wines that people can buy, and drink, and share. And isn't that what this should all be about?

We couldn't be prouder to be their partners, or to see their decades of work recognized in this way.