Our wine group met yesterday for a tasting of the Guigal La La’s.
Included are notes written by Jorge Mederos, our Sommelier.
Flight 1 Dorianne 2007, 2010, 2011
The wines were served colder than they should have, and they needed a little coaxing to start to show their flavors. Pineapple, lychee, apricots, pears. The quality was very even, differing mostly on the bottle age. The color on the 2007 was more evolved, and showed some riper more mature characteristics. The 2011 was giving very little at this stage. 2010, was the preferred wine, and it was very much alive, perhaps the 14.5% alcohol was part of the liveliness.
The group was very surprised with these wines because not many had tasted them before. Overall the impressions were very good and some of the comments were that this style of wine opened many possibilities of pairings with food, that perhaps a Chardonnay wouldn’t go well with.
At the end of the evening these wines kept evolving and improving in the glass. More than most of the reds!
Flight 2 1994 La Turque, La Mouline, La Landonne
The 1994 vintage was a cold one, and its impact was evident in these wines. There was not the expected fruit that you get from a ripe Syrah but there was enough tipicity that you could identify the grape, some pepper and some blackberry. The minerality of the terroir came through. Perhaps the Voignier in this year aided significantly in softening or making more elegant, palatable the vintage, and the group overwhelmingly preferred the La Mouline. It would be curious to see how these wines would evolve, perhaps the tannins which were still very present yesterday would soften, but I am not sure that the fruit that is there will be enough to hold on until then. Hopefully more spice or minerality would emerge? It would be interesting to open a bottle of La Mouline 1994 and drink slowly over a lazy afternoon to try to predict this vintage’s future.
Flight 3 1998 La Turque, La Mouline, La Landonne
Group preferences were more spread out here. Some people tended to prefer La Landonne’s power to the blended elegance of La Turque and La Mouline. All the wines showed well, and the group’s level of chatter incremented with this flight! Some of us expected these wines to be more evolved showing secondary flavors, spices and more black fruits, but they were somewhat closed. The overall consensus was that it was an improvement over the last flight and there was more balance in the wines. There were comments that the wines were harder to differentiate in this flight also. If I owned more of these wines, I would hold on to them for a few years.
Flight 4 2001 La Turque, La Mouline, La Landonne
The group was very excited with this flight. The youth of the wines was very evident vs. the other 2 flights. Some vintage influence here also as to the ripeness of the fruit perhaps higher alcohol also. Comments were made that these wines would be difficult to identify blindly as Cote Rotie. Not showing their terroir at this stage. Exhuberant wines, that gave much promise as to their future potential.
Overall La Mouline won every flight. Finesse over Brawn? The Voignier is like a balancing act softening the extremes in weather. Making cold years more palatable, and providing an earlier drinking window to the hotter more powerful years. There was one comment from the group as to how these wines would compare if all 3 were 100% Syrah. Would the vineyard differences be evident? It would be an interesting experiment to see how the differences in soil, vine age and the sun/wind exposure of the vineyard would impact the final product, but highly unlikely to happen.
