On Tuesday, one of my tasting groups did a vertical of Olga Raffault’s Chinon – Les Picasses spanning 1979 to 2011. I really enjoyed the wines.
A few overall thoughts.
• The wines showed more fruit than I expected.
• Only a couple of the wines showed marked green bell pepper/pyrazines on the nose.
• Even the brett-sensitive members picked up virtually none.
• As one might expect, the '89, '05 and '10 were standouts, but the '02 and '93 – vintages where you might have expected poor results in such a northerly locale – showed very well.
• There was surprisingly little difference between the young ones and the older ones (with the exception of the 1979, which was passed it for my tastes). They were a little bit like some California cabs that plateau seemingly forever.
• There was much less tertiary development than I expected in the old ones.
• The corks are quite short for wines that are known to age easily for 30 years in better vintages. But only the ’89 cork was crumbly, and that wine was sound.
• They threw a lot of sediment.
We tasted in order of age, non-blind. We didn’t rank them, so the scores are mine alone.
These were decanted about an hour ahead into pouring bottles, then consumed over an hour or hour and a half. We had turkey meatloaf and a quiche, both of which worked well with the tannins of these wines, as well as bread and cheese. I wouldn’t attempt these wines without food.
I retasted through the lineup after the others left, and again the next evening and bumped up several scores.
2011: Very pleasant, decent amount of fruit for the tannin. Very balanced. 89+/90 points
2010: Some green bell pepper on the nose here, but I don’t have a problem with that. Pretty ripe fruit (at least for a Chinon), and lots of it. Good grip. This is built for the long haul, though not as much as the ’05. Very pleasant now with food. This needs another 5-10 years to really hit its stride, I’d guess. 91+ I preferred this to the Baudry ringer on day 1 because I was put off by the jamminess of the Baudry.
2010 Baudry – Chinon – Les Crois Boissee: This was a ringer. We were told this was the 2011 Raffault and that the 2011 Raffault was the 2012.
Jammy fruit notes on the nose on day 1, and sweet, ripe, jammy fruit on the palate. Lot of grip/tannin. It seemed a bit overripe to me, though, and I gave it 88 points on day 1. On day 2 it came together and seemed Medoc-like, and I bumped it up to 91+ points. It’s bigger, less restrained and a bit less subtle than the Raffaults.
2005: I ordered this in a restaurant in 2011 to go with duck ragu on papardelli, and it was so good I went and bought some. That was a good call. Tasting this bottle, I just wish I’d loaded up!
It’s fabulous now, though still very young. Great concentration – oodles of fruit to offset the substantial tannins, but the fruit is wrapped up tightly, like a bundle bound with twine. Ripe but taut, is what I wrote. It isn’t giving its fruit away, though it’s there.
It seems like it has the makings to be another ’89 with another 10-15 years. 93+ both days. Sadly, I don’t see any on Wine Searcher, even though there are scads of old vintages around, many released in recent years by the domaine.
2002: A friend served this blindly to a group of us four or five years ago and we mostly guessed Burgundy because of its weight and finesse. It was so good we went in on a case together. (It was $26 a bottle or something silly at PJ’s.) No later bottle was remotely like that first one, and some had hard tannins.
This bottle showed very well. There was a faintly smoky note on the nose. Taut – tannin and acid and somewhat closed – but there’s lots of good decently ripe cab franc fruit. Many years of life ahead for this one. 92- for me.
1993: More green notes here, which is not surprising in a difficult vintage picked under clouds and rain. A bit lighter in color than the others. Drier, less fruity, but still really good. Moreover, it really opened up and fleshed out in the glass. Just gets better and better with air. Definitely more austere than any of the others, I found great pleasure in it. I started at 88 points, bumped it up to 91 at the end of the night and to 92 on day 2.
1989: A legendary vintage for Raffault. I remember several wonderful bottles of this ten years or so ago that had been released recently by the domaine.
Both on the nose and the palate, this showed like a Medoc. Rich fruit scents, and rich on the palate, with great structure of tannin and acid. Still youthful, despite a cork that disintegrated when it was removed. The most Bordeaux-like of the lot, but showing much less in the way of secondary aromas than a Bordeaux of a similar age. I gave it 93 during the tasting, lowered to 92 after others left because I found a little less precision there. But it was better on day 2. Tied with the ’05 for WOTN for me.
1979: Some people liked this, but there were marked coffee and caramel notes. Also menthol and ash. The fruit was drying out and the finish was a bit dry. As I said, others’ mileage varied. 78 for me.
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