2004 Pierre Gaillard Côte-Rôtie Rose Pourpre - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (7/23/2009)
There’s a story to this bottle. I took another of the same bottle to a tasting recently, where it was singularly unimpressive for my tastes. So I pulled this to put up for sale. Picking it up at home I noticed a few drops of wine on the table. Hmm. Ullage is fine, couldn’t see a leak, wiped the bottle down, but there’s another drop. Turned it over, and can see some liquid in the punt. Put a little pressure on the punt, and a chunk of glass collapsed into the bottle, a few drops of liquid spraying out. So I guess I won’t be selling this bottle 
Decanted it into another bottle, and drinking a glass a couple hours later, here’s the note:
The nose is a mix of intense vanilla and oak. The palate has decent fruit, but is a bit faded, and overwhelmed by sour oak and vanilla. The freshness and focus is dulled and blunted. It might not have been so bad on its own, but I had been drinking another wine earlier that sees little oak, and the comparison was blatantly obvious. What a shame. And this is happening at more and more Cote Rotie producers. This is a producer I have followed for a number of years. Even visited and tasted at the cellar - where there are a lot of brand new barrels. It is a beautiful, new, very clean operation, but obviously has gone too far to the “modern” side. This is Gaillard’s “premier” wine, I wonder if he will come to his senses and back off on the oak regime at some point in the future. (82 pts.)
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