The Joy of Catching a Wine at the Perfect Moment...

Over the years I have learned to let go of the notion that I will catch many of the wines I own at perfect moment in their evolution. They will almost always be just a bit too young - some aspect shows just a touch more obviousness than another, They could resolve. Or they could be on the other side of perfection - the inevitable downslope where some aspect of the wine drags behind or perhaps even the dread collapse where oxidation does in the whole wine.

I feel like you have to taste a lot of wine to get to the point where you understand that the perfect bottle will often appear from nowhere. It may come on a weeknight, like it did tonight, and you will often have no idea that it was coming. Oh sure, you can try to rig the odds in your favor, but I have learned that wine will always play havoc with my expectations. I can only hope for moments like this, and be ready to catch the lightning in the bottle when the bottle is opened.

So, the perfect bottle tonight - Jean-Michel Gerin 1997 Cote-Rotie ‘Les Grandes Places’. I tasted this on release, and squirreled away a few bottles. According to the important critics of the time, 97 wasn’t a great year, and not a bad one, but this is from a great terroir and a producer I have always liked a lot, I stacked the odds in my favor by waiting 15 years, but I opened this I guess because I am about to go to Asia to a place where there won’'t be much wine, and I wanted a good one before I left, and, well, why not?

Why not indeed? I have tasted greater Cote-Rotie, but perhaps never one that was at its apogee like this. Don’t get me wrong, the peak of a bad wine is not worth discussing vis a vis infanticide on greatness. The 97 Grandes Places falls short of the potential of some other Cote-Roties I have tasted, but this is lightning in the bottle.

Put another way, I can imagine a greater wine, but I cannot imagine a greater experience with this wine, based on all that I have learned on cellaring, drinking and experiencing wine in general.

What do I smell - aromas of baked currants and cassis, smoke, bacon, flowers, fudge and wet, loamy earth.

What do I taste? - Perfectly integrated flavors of cassis, blackcurrant, cocoa powder, bitter chocolate,

How does it feel? - Mature wine has a texture where all its components work together to send deep flavors all over your mouth and across your tongue. This wine feels like it could go on forever. Harmony is a word that gets abused from time to time, but everything is perfectly in synch with this ravishing Cote-Rotie…

outstanding sentiments well-expressed.
alan

I had this experience with an 86 Chave Hermitage early this year. I’ve had most of the great(“er”) Chaves from the 80s and 90s but have never had a more enjoyable bottle on a given night.

It is the difference between wine theory and wine practice. We don’t drink points or potential. We drink real bottles of real wine. That makes things complicated, but I like it,…

Thank you, Alan. Based on knowing your tastes over many years on wine boards, thank you for real…

Beautiful note.
In my experience, those epiphany wines are opened at the perfect moment of development, and are often given an emotional boost by the occasion (e.g. a birthday, anniversary, visit with old friends, spectacular meal, etc.)

Say no more.

Lovely post Jim. That wine was your “Coup de coeur”. Not the greatest that you have ever had but one that grabbed your heart and generated that post.

thank you.

Anthony.

Beautiful post and thank you for sharing. These experiences are what make our passion worthwhile.

Great post Jim. It is thoroughly satisfying when you back yourself on a wine and then drink it somewhere near it’s apogee. Well done.
Best regards
Jeremy

That is exactly the magic of wine. Every bottle has its perfect day if one is lucky enough to find it.

Opened my next-to-last bottle of this six years later. It is still quite beautiful, albeit slightly more delicate. There’s more earth and truffle, and the fruit aromatics are more restrained. Cassis and white flowers.

There’s a more pronounced dark olive, Mediterranean taste. It’s still lively and mouthfilling, with lovely concentration and intensity on the midpalate, and excellent length.

Opened to wrap up birthday week. It’s a bottle I’ve toted with me for many moves, and one of the last of my old ‘New Jersey stash’ from when I lived and worked there. It’s very close in quality to the 2012 bottle. I paired this with the Gourmet Mag Steak Au Poivre recipe, which was the recipe I dedicated myself to perfecting when I decided to teach myself how to cook. It was a lovely Tuesday.

Based on my 2012 note on this wine, I might get into a 2004 this holiday season.

Really lovely post. Made my night.

A most eloquent exposition of the fundamental truth: “there are no great wines, only great bottles.” Not sure who first said that but they sure understoood wine.

+1

Great post, Jim. This was my experience with the 1966 Gruaud-Larose, opened in 1996 for a 30th birthday. I’ve had other wines that “had been” or “were going to be” greater than that wine at some point in their evolution (other than the night I drank them of course), but none greater than that one bottle was that one night.

…

And I’ve been chasing the dragon ever since!

Wonderful thread. I had a great experience in maybe 1990. At a beach house on a screen porch, I opened a 1985 Joblot Givry aux Moines. Most of the group paid no attention, but a few people stopped what they were doing and said, Wow, what is that smell. One woman said, I guess that is what they mean by a raspberry nose. It was a glorious wine that filled up an outdoor venue and drank like a grand cru. Perfect moment…

Well written. Thanks for sharing. I’ve also found that my most profound experiences with wine happen at moments in time when I’m at peace and ready to receive them. Often times I look inside myself and gauge state of mind before selecting a specific bottle.

Great initial post (which I never saw till now) and fantastic restraint based on that initial tasting in 2012 through to now. (Not sure how you did that! Are you honing in on the specific age range you prefer your Cote-Rotie? Of course, it’s not that easy when you introduce vintage, bottle variation, producer, vineyard, etc. Is there a magic formula?

I gotta say we caught these in the perfect drinking window the other night, thanks Elliott!