What about the bottle you had on 11/10/2010 that you rated 92 points?
Peter, just had the 1998 Le Meal from magnum. Very disappointed. A bunch of Chapoutier sold very poorly at the recent Wally’s auction. Chapoutiers price point on release is typically double what they command at auction.
But according to your account, the wine had NOT oxidized when you gave up on it - in fact, in sounds like it had barely even budged [although to the extent that its profile changed at all, it sounds like it changed for the better].
So you don’t know for sure what might or might not have happened to the wine if you had followed it through its entire oxidation curve [which might have lasted a week or more].
I wouldn’t give up on a high acid red so quickly.
Nathan - shouldn’t you be condemning the insane pricing of trophy wines here? What’s gotten into you?
So I noticed that but have zero memory of that. And because I didn’t write down any tasting note, that’s why I was hopeful when I pulled out another bottle last week. '06 with note sounds bad, '10 with no note seems better, '14 should be a winner. I guess I’ll assume that the '10 bottle came at the end of a dinner when I was half in the bag and decided “Fuk, this tastes ok” or something like that. W/o a note, not sure what I was thinking. I’m not perfect, though my mom and wife say otherwise…
Nah. The wine is crap, or at least not nearly worth the $100+ it trades for and the 95 Parker points…
Chapoutier rarely excites me. Especially his high end Rhones. I have had some that were excellent but often the dessert whites. The high end reds always seem devoid of character and are solid but not more. Given the tariffs I stopped buying in around 2000 so my info could be a bit dated. I also found so many other N. Rhones with more character that it was a choice I never looked back from. Good sale candidates, IMHO.
I liked his 1991 Hermitage La Sizeranne a lot, the one time I had it, but I’ve had many more disappointments than successes from this producer. And I’m sure this is grossly unfair, but, apart from Robert Parker, I’ve never read of anyone meeting Chapoutier himself and coming away with any opinion other than that the guy’s a complete dick.
Frank, same here. I remember having the '91 Cote Rotie Mordoree and thinking it was an amazing wine. I’ve never been able to replicate that experience with any other Chapoutier bottling…
Overall, I am not a huge fan of the Chapoutier red wines either, but I did particularly enjoy this one, as well as the 1991. I even once had the two side by side, and while I felt the 1991 was the far better wine, I thought the 1995 held its own, albeit with a darker profile leaning more towards the black/blue spectrum. I still found it had the campfire, and olive tapenade notes that I love in Northern Rhone wines.