TN: 2018 Domaine François Cotat Sancerre Les Culs de Beaujeu

• 2018 Domaine François Cotat Sancerre Les Culs de Beaujeu - France, Loire Valley, Upper Loire, Sancerre (5/5/2020)
  I just can’t say enough praise about these wines, especially the Beaujeu! The florals and minerality are mind-blowing! The fruit is crystalline, pure, and SO refreshing. This 18 Beau has crazy lime juice, olive oil color…slight cloudy, probably cuz it’s SO full of chalky crushed minerals! The fruit is a little more substantial and riper than previous vintages I’ve had…shows more tropical cream…yet still possesses an absolute CUT of piercing citrus acidity and crushed rocks…definitely fresh limes here, lemon pucker, as well as exotics of lemongrass, quince, gooseberry, chive. Florals are intoxicating…lime blossoms, lemon verbena, mint wax, crushed limestone…finishes persistently long, tart, salty, and spicy…SO refreshing and in perfect balance. Also knowing these age really well(08 recently was fire!) makes me giddy! But the problem is they are too good in their youth…you need to load up to be able to age a few out! Again, blown away, and further solidifies my belief that the Beaujeu is Cotat’s best wine! (95 pts.)

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But why, when you can have the damn mountains?

Well damn Buzz guess I better start drinking my 17’s…and buy some 18’s

Happy to hear that despite the supposedly warmer and warmer vintages these wines still manage to deliver with ease! Cotat is definitely one of the names I am looking to buy more while it’s still relatively affordable.

For god’s sake, stop posting about Cotat before it’s too late!!!

A little more sweetness comes out 2 days later…casaba melon, pineapple…some sour grapefruit…chalky crushed minerals still there…but I think I prefer the cut and energy on day one?

Cellar Tracker thinks there was an yuge change in the label for 2018 [assuming they’re the same wine]:
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But no one has posted a tasting note on the “Cuvée Spéciale” for more than two decades.
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I suppose they refreshed all the labels as my 2018 Les Caillottes and Rosé also look different than before.

Had a 2009 Grand Cote last night that was phenomenal. That’s a big solar vintage (15%alc) but thought it was really well balanced. Incredible with sushi

18 Mont Damnes label looks the same, but Culs de Beaujeu and rosé have been updated. Haven’t received my les caillottes yet.

Nathan it appears the cuveé speciale was a thing of the late 90s. A few came up on Winebid recently. I haven’t seen any new releases of a reserve cuveé in the few years I’ve been following Cotat

Here is what John Gillian had to say about. Looks like a special cuvée for the sweetest / ripest vines

“As I mentioned above, François Cotat has just started to pick a bit earlier than had been the family tradition dating back to the days when his father and uncle ran the family domaine, as the very real changes in our global weather patterns in the last couple of decades were producing more vintages in Chavignol with unprecedented levels of sugar in the grapes. He has only done so in the last few vintages in response to the realization that global warming is here to stay and picking at the traditional dates was producing wines that were higher in alcohol than he would like, as well as still often endowed with some residual sugar. As I alluded to in the introduction, such vintages were rare occurrences in the past, with an occasional vintage such as 1989 only coming along every twenty or twenty-five years, but in the twenty-first century, vintages like 2002, 2005, 2006, 2009. 2010 and 2012 have all seen soaring sugar levels from the Cotat family parcels. In the past, François Cotat, or his father and uncle before him, would make a separate
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bottling of the ripest grapes, which would be called “Cuvée Spéciale”. In the old days, the Cuvée Spéciale would normally hail from the last-picked or botrytized grapes in La Grande Côte in extraordinary years, but as sugars began to mount everywhere in our era of climate change, it was not practical to make more Cuvée Spéciale and less of the other bottlings and starting to pick a bit earlier was the logical response. But, one should not understate how difficult this decision must have been for François Cotat to take, as tradition here is the river on which the Cotat boat has floated for three generations, and given the long, long line of utterly remarkable wines fashioned here by the family as the decades have rolled by, changing traditional practices can only have been resorted to when all other possibilities were examined and rejected”

Are you confusing Pascal with Francois as my 2018 Les Monts Damnes has that same updated look as his other wines in this vintage?

Interesting, I have mine in storage but may be wrong here. Will double check