TN: Jamet Cote-Rotie '97...(short/boring)

Tried this last night w/ dinner:

  1. Jamet AC: Cote-Rotie (13%; mebalp) Jean-Paul et Jean-Luc Jamet/LeVallin/Ampuis 1997: Med.dark color w/ light bricking; strong NRhone/roasted/smokey/espresso/smoked meats/bit bacon fat light violets/Syrah/floral bit earthy/dusty quite perfumed classic mature C-R very complex nose; lightly tart/tangy bit lean/austere/metallic strong C-R/roasted/smoked meats/espresso very slight floral/violets/Syrah complex flavor w/ light tangy/bitey tannins; very long bit bitey/tangy/tart/austere rather classic C-R/bacon fat/roasted/smoked meats/espresso very slight violets/Syrah quite complex finish w/ light hard/angular/bitey tannins; a beautiful classic mature/C-R nose but a bit hard/angular/drying out on the palate; a real pleasure to drink.

And a wee BloodyPulpit:

  1. Yet anuther btl from my “orphan” stash. So very low expectations. No ullage to speak of. Stood upright for almost 20 yrs. Cork solidly in place and fell to the Ah-So eventually. Should have been dead&gone. It was not.
    As soon as I poured the first glass…I knew I was in trouble. Fairly dark color w/ little bricking. By the time I’d finished cooking dinner, nearly the whole friggin’ btl was gone. I hate wines like that.
    Tom

Nice. Imagine what this would have been like with more ideal storage conditions!

Yup…that’s one of the things that runs thru my mind working these orphans…how spectacular this wine may have been.
Tom

Those orphan bottles of yours often provide unexpected and interesting TNs. As Alsn suggested have you ever been able to put together a tasting with pairs of bottles from the garage and from a temperature controlled cellar? Should make for an interesting discussion among your tasting group.

Tom says that this part of his garage gets pretty hot in the summer (though it obviously stays pretty cold/cool most of the year in his location). But I’m suspicious that it’s as bad as he says. My experience with bottles that have seen long term exposure to temps in the 90s is that they are always toast. Always.

Wish I could do that, Everett. But I’m not that well organized, alas.
Tom

Hey Tom,

If I may, I suggest you edit your post titles to read: (short/interesting/accurate/insightful). [worship.gif]

Jim

And it probably cost you 25 bucks.

The Janet’s consider the 97’ one of if not their best vintage.

Not really, Jim. These wines had been badly abused. So my TN’s have absolutely no relevance to any Jamet '97
that anybody else has under better storage conditions, other than theirs oughta be spectacular. If we believe the “experts”.
Tom

My recollection of those Jamet’s were in the high $20’s.
Tom

Well, Alan…my thermometer ystrday read 94 F. Today it was some cloudy and down to 92 F. Those are the kinda temps we get up here
in late May-late July. My garage has a double-wide metal door that’s painted dark green on the South-facing outside. That metal door
absorbs sunlight (visible part of the spectrum) like crazy and then re-radiates it isotropically (so half goes inside) in the infrared part of the spectrum.
I can explain the physics of the process if you’d like, but it’d be way over everyone else’s head!! neener
Tom

A well-stored bottle of 97 Jamet is one of the greatest wines from the Northern Rhone I have ever had.

Tom, just trying to understand how these wines seem to have held up so well in conditions that should have roasted them. By chance were they all sitting on the concrete floor? That could keep them a lot cooler than the surrounding air temps might suggest. I have a few shorter term drinkers in the house, sitting on a tile floor. Past few days have been pretty hot, into the 90s outside, and high 80s inside the house during the afternoon. So I took my little infrared thermometer and measured some stuff around the house, yep, 85-86 degrees for random stuff around the room. But those wine bottles on the tile floor were 72 at the base, maybe 75 at the top of the bottle. Combination of starting off fairly cool from their overnight temperature, and the coolness of the floor, which is right above the cooler crawl space. Just a thought.

This is killing me, Tom. Why was a 97 Jamet in your garage in New Mexico? By the time I was turned on to Jamet a few years ago, they were already selling for nearly a hundy.

Well, Andrew…like I said elsewhere…I’m not always the most organized guy around…nor the sharpest pencil in the box.
From that same stash, I have one more '97 and also a '98.
Not don’t cry, Andrew…not becoming for a grownup.
Tom

… So much so they released a one off cuvee in addition to the usual top of the line Brune called Les Sommets d’Harys (harys = syrah in reverse). It’s an extreme example of the Jamet style.

Good note, and quite fascinating. The '97 Jamet Cote Rotie had been consistently good for me since I started drinking the vintage from many years ago and still have a couple lying in storage.

As an adult life has dealt me some blows where I cried unapologetically, but none of them have been caused by wine…yet.

Perhaps people who worry when their cellar temp creeps above 64.7 and relative humidity drops below 61.2% are a little unjustified with worry??? :wink: