So dirty it gives you the Clape: A story of a night of old cornas and one Juge youngin

Got together with some of the guys to tear through some aged cornas.

Had on tap the 85/88/90 Clape and 88 Verset. I blinded them on a 14 Marcel Juge that arrived a couple weeks ago.

I think at this point I’ve had enough older Clape that was stored well and with good fills/color to definitively say… they just don’t age that well. Verset, Allemand, Juge even Robert Michel have all been pretty damn brilliant in the mid 80s early 90s but something about Clape… I feel the fruit just falls off and doesn’t leave a lasting impression on the palate.

All 3 bottles we had tonight were of brilliant color and high fills, but they all left us wanting on the palate. Even the most expressive, the 90 Clape from a ripe vintage had fruit but it just didn’t have enough depth and power behind it.

Considering the pricing on Clape in the recent HDH auction, they can have em at $600 for the 90 Clape.

Anyways, WOTN to me was the 14 Juge, another marvelous bottling of an incredible producer that unfortunately only has one more release left.

The 88 Verset was really horribly corked which makes me cry such tears of sadness.

• 1985 Domaine Auguste Clape Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (10/20/2017)
  ethereal nose of blue fruit and sweet blood, but palate was getting pretty faded and came up a touch empty. Structure wasn’t there to hold up the fruit over time.
• 1988 Domaine Auguste Clape Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (10/20/2017)
  Bacon filled sweet fruit on the nose, palate was filled with cool fruit and acidity, but not much of a finish and could have been more expansive and expressive on the palate. The flavors are there but just not enough depth.
• 1988 Noël Verset Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (10/20/2017)
  severely and utterly corked.
• 1990 Domaine Auguste Clape Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (10/20/2017)
  Nose full of roses, iron and tar. Palate needed about 2-3 hours to really open up. Forward and filled with sweet fruit but the mid palate did drop a bit which left you wanting. But the bottle was the most expressive out of the 85/88/90 trio that night. Good not great wine.
• 1996 Philipponnat Champagne Brut Clos des Goisses - France, Champagne (10/20/2017)
  Something was off with our bottle, muted fruit, some acidity but didn’t have the power and youthful outrage of prior bottles.
• 2014 Marcel Juge Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (10/20/2017)
  SO FREAKING GOOD. Double decanted, drank a hour later, really hit peak stride around 4 hours after being double decanted.

The nose is that same ol class juge nose of wild fruit and olive tapenade that explodes out of the glass. The palate tho… i don’t think i’ve experienced this softness on the palate for a Juge before. It just glides off the tongue, the texture is almost pillow like in weight and purity. No tannic or earthy roughness. Just beautiful soft fruit, crunchy minerality on the back end. So so so good.

And so so so unobtainable. You must know a North Korean black market company to get any.

And I don’t think (or never have thought) that Clape is about the fruit. In my mind, it’s about the granite, structure, and austere power of Cornas.

Was the '88 Clape a Kermit Lynch import? In only that vintage and '83, the KL barrels were 100% Reynard. I had both at a dinner at Acquerello many years ago (10? 12?) and they were stunning. Each one was brought by a different person, a total coincidence as it wasn’t prearranged in advance.

??? Retiring?

FYI, 1985 was not the most structured year in the Northern Rhone – it was pretty fruity early on and a tad low in acid – and wasn’t viewed as one for the ages. And '88 was not a really top year in the Northern Rhone. Livingstone-Learmonth gave the Clape '85 only four out of six stars and put the end of its drinking window at 2011. He gave the '88 Clape only three stars and said drink up to 2015.

Twenty-seven to 32 years is pushing it for most Northern Rhones, but I’ve had better luck with old Clapes than you. Claude Kolm was kind enough to serve an '83 and a '90 Clape at a dinner four years ago, and they were amazingly fresh. The fruit on the '83 was thinning out just a tad, but I still gave it a 92. And the '90 was darker and riper than the '83, but lovely. I gave it 93 points. L-L gave it six stars. (I’m pretty sure Claude purchased them from Kermit Lynch on release.)

A few years earlier, Claude had served an '88 that was decent but not exciting. I think that was just the nature of the vintage.

A '91 Clape that I opened in 2008 was excellent. “Fabulous!” I wrote. “Very fresh, but silky, gulpable. Can be aged longer, but wonderful now. All the stars align. 93+”

That’s a good point. Back in the early 90s I attended a blind tasting with pairs of Chave Hermitage – one each of the Kermit Lynch import and the East Coast importers. The wines were all good, but the Kermit bottles were more concentrated and profound. I’d be pretty sure that Clape bottled barrel by barrel in those days, with no attempt at blending for uniformity.

No. It was from across the pond. We did have a KL bottling last year that was similar.

While I have never been a big Clape fan, I wonder how many hands the bottles went through before they got to this dinner.

Interesting discussion on old Clape.
Our wine group is going to do a Clape vertical next month. Some one else is organising the line up so I am not sure of the mix of old vs new.
It would be interesting to see whether people prefer the young or old vintages.

I have also done several bottles of Kermit’s side by side with those of the UK distributor, Robin Yapp, and I found Yapp’s better. The biggest gap was 1983; probably a four point difference.

That’s interesting, Mark. Yapp had a great reputation, I know.

Any idea of the provenance of those bottles?

There’s another issue with some of the Clapes from the 80s: Terrible corks. The cork slid into my last '83 when I opened it in 2003, and I’ve been present for similar loose corks on other people’s bottles.

I was on Yapp’s mailing list from the early 1980s on. So those were pristine and privately imported.

Kermit bottles must have come from my normal purchasing, anything in the secondary market was purchased from rare Wine Company, where I bought a ton of Chave. I think the only exception was a case of 1984, which I picked up from Pop’s in the early 1990s… at $10.99 a bottle.

I walked by something like two cases of '14 Juge in NJ earlier this year. Only vaguely recognized it as something rare, so only grabbed two bottles. Never showed up on the website, and they have none left. Kicking myself.

I remember the Clapes telling us they had bottled some pure Reynard for KL one year, might have been 1990.

That’s interesting. I wonder how late there was a difference. I bought several vintages in the 2000s from Yapp, when I was spending a lot of time on business in England.

not an issue. Like i stated, I’ve had these bottling multiple times and it’s been consistent.

4 years (and 9 years in the case of your 2008 note) are a long time in between, enough time for the fruit to fade. I can easily see the 90 being far deeper 4 years ago.

I’ve had glorious 25-30+ year old Juge, Verset, Allemand, so Cornas can certainly age very well. I was telling my friends I think Clape’s sweet spot is about 15-20 years old. The 95 we had earlier this year was very very delicious.

Charlie, I think you’re right, at least about Clape. Though I suspect there are some individual vintages that are exceptions, probably2005 and 2010, maybe 2015 will be one of those too. Huh, vintages divisible by 5?

1985 and 1990 throw your theory out the window ;p. The 95 was pretty great and packed to the gills, so maybe it’ll last another 5 years. Who knows.

When did the winemaking shift from Auguste more to Pierre and then Olivier? Maybe that could explain ageability

Anyone here knows why Juge only has one more vintage to go?