Piaugier Sablet Cotes-du-Rhone Villages Blanc 2021

Streaks of honey and candlewax lend oily heft to yellow-apple and pear flavors in this broad-shouldered Grenache Blanc. Fermented and matured in oak demi muid, it's a rounded, weighty dry white that finishes on kisses of smoke and vanilla bean. It's appealing young but likely to improve through 2030. 

This white blend from the Southern Rhone village of Sablet is gorgeous. The nose immediately shows ripe yellow apple, toast, baking spice, honeycomb, wild herb, hawthorn blossom, and crushed quartz mineral aromas. Expansive on the palate, there is a viscous core of preserved apple and quince paste flavors that evolves toward vanilla, clove, and dried herb notes that linger on the finish. The judicious use of cooperage and full body will appeal to fans of white Burgundy, but the breadth and powerful weight is classically Rhône.