François Villard, Saint-Joseph (Rhône Valley, France) 2016

 This delicious wine is notably more impressive than the “Reflet” St-Jo in 2016, though that wine is also very good and a fine representation of a wonderfully suave vintage.  Yet this “Mairlant” bottling offers up more of everything, including toasty, spicy oak aromas that lead into very dark-toned fruit flavors with accents of cured meat, campfire embers, iodine and pen ink.  A glass-staining wine with striking intensity.  I see very little of this currently on offer in the USA, but the state-run monopoly in Pennsylvania is selling it for the amazingly reasonable sum of $32, which is tempting me to make the drive from DC.