2005 Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe "La Crau". H. Brunier & Fils, Vignerons. 14.5 % abv. Very dark purple and opaque. I was a bit all over the place on this wine as are the CellarTracker notes. (On CT some say this is primary and needs more cellaring and some say it is ready for drinking. They tend to agree on red fruit notes, mainly cherry and some say raspberry but initially I was getting black fruits.)
Fine-grained tannins. Tobacco and tea leaves with dark fruits on the first evening. Approachable now but slightly brooding note. It may offer more with further cellaring. I enjoyed this with broiled lamb chop and potatoes but wasn't completely wowed. It did seem a little more mellow on the second evening and morphing from dark fruits to cherry notes. I ended up feeling I got my money's worth from the bottle but was not crazy about it. I don't drink a lot of Southern Rhone wines and it isn't one of my favorite regions so maybe I'm not the one to do this wine justice. It has almost a 92-point average rating on CellarTracker.