Some relatively recent tastes.
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2013 Guillaume Gilles Côtes du Rhône Les Peyrouses - France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Côtes du Rhône (5/6/2019)
Just fantastic. Not a Cornas, but not not a Cornas - everything about this wine says Cornas, from the savory, meaty, stemmy nose to the deep and clear-running dark raspberryish fruit, to the stony finish and clingy and raspy tannins. This maybe doesn’t have the full depth of Gilles’s proper Cornas, but it’s super terrific and convincing. -
2012 Domaine du Coulet (Matthieu Barret) Cornas Brise Cailloux - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (4/3/2019)
A third bottle from the same stash, and I’m no closer to understanding these wines. On pop-n-pour, this was simply fantastic with a super opulent and heady nose with musky dark fruits and truffles, and it drank great too. But after a little while, a strongly spiky note – sour, piquant, sun-dried tomato? - that I associate with heat damage but maybe is just from overripeness and volatile acidity. Anyway, it cracked up and died. -
2014 Clusel-Roch Côte-Rôtie La Viallière - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (3/30/2019)
Totally clamped and shut down. With air and some effort, sprightly bright red fruit and spices come across before the suffocating veil of very fine tannins bring an end to the party. The body here is very light and I imagine that with time this will become a very elegant beauty. I’ll revisit this on day 2. -
2014 Clusel-Roch Côte-Rôtie La Viallière - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (3/31/2019)
Coming back to this a day later. Things are more open - the nose has dry herbs like bay leaf, rose petals, a slight medicinal quality to it, and a whiff of bacon over the little red fruits that gain intensity with air. It’s still pretty tight on the palate but with coaxing some darker, more savory notes come forward wrapped around the tart fruit. I’ll leave the rest another day. -
2016 Guy Farge St. Joseph Passion de Terrasses - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, St. Joseph (3/27/2019)
Dope St-Jo. Some of the grapes for this wine are from vines planted in 1899. Dark and fully ripe, this has deep reserves of pure Syrah fruit and savory notes, with more than a touch of camphor and bay leaf-like herbaceousness in spades. This is really a luxuriant wine, richly fruited with awesome old-vine sap, and it’s utterly delicious with a full texture. There’s very good energy here underlying the glorious young fruit. The fruit is so prominent that it nearly masks the raspy tannins on the finish. This ought to blossom in a few years. -
2011 Cuchet Beliando Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (3/24/2019)
Phew! Got a few of these from Sommpicks and they arrived recently, so I popped one last night. I was pretty disappointed – dull, inchoate, a wine in search of a purpose. The nose was mute and the wine flat and uninspiring. Over the course of a few hours it got better – some sharper definition, bringing some more obvious Syrah characteristics into focus – but it didn’t quite pull itself together so I put the wine away, muttering curses at Sommpicks as I drifted off to sleep. Now it’s a day later and I’m back in the ring and bang! - this is just what it ought to be: dark, rugged, and savory Cornas with a capital C. Totally on point and exactly what I had hoped for. (I still love you, Sommpicks.) -
2014 Eric Texier Côtes du Rhône-Brézème Vieille Serine Domaine de Pergaud - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côtes du Rhône-Brézème (3/24/2019)
Classic Texier Brézème - major lifted aromatics with loads of floral and pungent savory notes – just a sick nose! – and huge throbbing acids on the palate that steer the meaty and briny flavors off the edge towards tartness. (The most acidic wine I have ever tasted, by far, and man was it off the charts crazy, was the 2000 edition of this wine.) This is really lovely stuff but I wish there was just a little more flesh clinging onto the bones. -
2015 Domaine des Pierres Seches St. Joseph Sainte-Epine - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, St. Joseph (3/15/2019)
2nd bottle, almost a year and a half after the first. I’m still feeling out where Sylvain Gauthier is trying to go with these wines. Like the first bottle, this is still huge, but has eased off some as the Galactus-sized cottony fruit has relaxed a little. Now it’s big but also stern - serious puckering tannins. Is this a positive development? There’s still a pile of gravel beneath the fruit and meat; maybe this will go somewhere after all. If before this wine was a total asshole, now it’s just kind of a dick. -
2016 Eric Texier Côte-Rôtie Vieilles Vignes - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (3/10/2019)
Very pretty wine. A total featherweight on day one, the wine is very fragrant with a slender and airy frame and super pure raspberry fruit that just begins to turn savory with air. It is utterly joyous at this stage with little complexity. Like many 2016s that I have tried, this firms up overnight, showing darker fruit, brine, classic Syrah savoriness. The body is still very light with barely a trace of tannins. Graceful. -
2015 Domaine les Alexandrins St. Joseph - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, St. Joseph (1/23/2019)
Well, I’ve got a bunch of this, since I unwittingly ordered a second round without ever trying (or remembering) the first. Turns out I’m a genius! This is made by Marc Sorrel’s son Guillaume and apparently comes from a very old-vine vineyard (90+). Great stuff, deep and dark and meaty, bloody and savory, super floral nose and all the things you’d ever want, and moreover it’s drinking very well right now - no shutdown theatrics here. Palate-staining and rich, but moreish due to very fresh acidity. With air the finish turns tart and astringent. I’d venture that 5-7 years would be ideal but this has enough to carry it to the vaunted 15-year horizon. ** Drinking another bottle of this right now (05/30/19) and it’s just a killer. -
2015 Domaine Gallet (Henri et Philippe) Côte-Rôtie - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (1/19/2019)
This is young and promising, very compact with a rich and silky texture. It’s in sort of a dumb phase but with air the nose shows rustic scents of smoky dark fruit, floral notes, bitter bark, olives, and faint camphor. It’s a bit big and blocky on the palate but I believe that it will settle down in time. Very fine stuff.
