One of the first tips I received when I started at KLWM twenty years ago was from Bruce Neyers, our legendary and now-retired national sales manager, who told me to buy a case of Vieux Télégraphe and tuck it away in the cellar, year in and year out. He had gotten the advice years before from Kermit, who had written in 1992 that “no domaine comes close to Vieux Télégraphe’s record in terms of consistency, typicity, and aging potential.” Sage advice indeed, as before long, you’ll have a VT for any occasion, be it younger, older, darker, brighter, bolder, subtler—whatever floats your boat. The only thing needed to consider each vintage is whether that case should be in bottles or magnums, or, in Bruce’s case, both.
     Rest assured that if the Brunier family ever had even a hint of doubt that their epic plateau of La Crau, with old vines swimming in its famed sea of stones, did not give remarkable fruit, there simply wouldn’t be any Vieux Télégraphe made that vintage. That phenomenon remains extremely rare, the last occurrence being when a full-blown tornado tore through the vines in the middle of the growing season!
     September has come, and with it, as always, the arrival of the new release of VT, freshly racked from large, French oak casks after a two-year slumber, bottled unfiltered, and shipped to our shores.
     This year’s arrival, the 2024 vintage, is an essential piece to have in one’s VT collection. It is a wine of precision, balance, elegance, and silken texture—a vintage perfectly adapted for moderate and deft use of whole clusters, which is rare, Nicolas Brunier tells me. With a warm growing season, never once reaching heat-wave levels, each variety reached a clear and ideal expression in the blend: the Grenache shows restrained power, licorice notes, and supple tannins, the Mourvèdre gives its southern accent of wild black cherry and garrigue, while the Syrah adds that wonderful touch of crushed black pepper on top. The big news for this vintage is the first-ever addition of a parcel of Cinsault from La Crau, which graduated from the Télégramme cuvée to the mothership VT blend, adding a bit of a fresh strawberry lift.