Rustic Jewel of the Rhône Meets Modernity This is what I learned during a recent visit to Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the great wine-growing village in the Rhône Valley of France. I traveled there to taste more than 120 red wines from the 2010 vintage, which was recently released to rave reviews. About half were so-called traditional wines, made in large quantities, using time-honored methods and priced modestly (for Châteauneuf-du-Pape, at least). The rest were "prestige" or "special" cuvées - boutique-style wines made with more modern techniques. These wines often command triple-digit critics" scores - and prices. As I've written previously about the wines of two other Rhône villages, Cairanne and Rasteau, 2010 is an excellent year for the region. Several Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers, including Marc Perrin of Château de Beaucastel and Thierry Usseglio of Domaine Pierre Usseglio, said they might have made their best wines ever in 2010. Yet even a great vintage cannot obscure big differences in winemaking approaches. While tasting the traditional wines, I lost track of the number of times I wrote down descriptions like "fresh," "elegant" and "balanced." While I can't claim an encyclopedic knowledge of old Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I was reminded of vintages like 2001 and 1990, when the wines cluster around the sweet spot where power and finesse intersect. Of the 68 wines in this category, I would have been happy to buy perhaps one-third to one-half of them - an unusually high hit rate. Next up were the 61 special cuvées. There were some excellent wines, including my top choice among all the wines in either category, Mr. Usseglio's Cuvée de Mon Aïeul. Still, I found myself using descriptors like "oaky," "cherry cola" and "aggressive" a bit more than I would have liked. These wines are built for the long haul, not for early drinking, so it's no surprise that they were less approachable than the traditional wines. But I'm not sure I would want to splurge on more than a handful of them. Prestige cuvées are a fairly recent invention. Henri Bonneau's Réserve des Célestins, generally considered to be the first, dates back to the 1920s, but the movement didn't really gain momentum until the 1980s, when well-known producers like Beaucastel joined in. The cuvées have proliferated since then. Harry Karis, a Dutch doctor who has written a book about Châteauneuf-du-Pape, identified 174 of them, from about 100 producers, as of 2009. Some of the cuvées feature grapes from small, special parcels of vines. Unusually among great French wine appellations, Châteauneuf-du-Pape has no official classification to designate superior vineyards, like the grands crus and premiers crus of Burgundy. So, with the special cuvées, some growers have created their own, informal distinctions. "Fifteen years ago, we talked only about the mistral and the galets roulés," said Mr. Usseglio, referring to the north wind that whips down the Rhône Valley, and to the smooth stones that were deposited here ages ago by the river. Both are distinctive features of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, helping to dry the grapes after rains, thereby preventing maladies, while preserving moisture in the soil to nouris the vines during the hot summers. Yet winemakers have shown, in some cases with their special cuvées, that it is also possible to make great Châteauneuf-du-Pape from sandy or clayey soil. "Now there is more talk about the diversity of the terroir," Mr. Usseglio added. Other growers use their prestige cuvées to highlight a single grape variety, usually grenache. This grape makes up more than two-thirds of the appellation's total vineyard area, but until recent years it was generally considered too high in alcohol and too cloyingly rich to make great wine without the help of other varieties.