My curiosity regarding Jamet was peaked in this thread in which many of you cited Jamet as a high end producer worth the $$$. I had never had Jamet before, and I’m usually not the biggest Syrah fan, so I figured I’d start with this entry level bottling just to get a sense of the house style before spending the big bucks. My TN:
This my say “Côtes du Rhône” on the label, but one sniff confirms that this is very serious wine. Youthful appearing in the glass. The nose is classic Syrah- meaty, black olives, India ink, a touch of iodine, black and red cherries. I don’t get the violet notes that many talk about with N Rhone reds. The word that comes to mind is “muscular”.
Despite the big beefy aromatic profile, the body isn’t heavy or plodding at all. It is, at most, medium bodied, with a good deal of acidity, and chalky, somewhat sticky mouth-coating tannins. The flavors are dark, deep, savory, even a touch salty, while supporting a wonderful overlay of cherry fruit. Here’s a random association: I once brought a big bag of ripe black cherries to the beach. I remember enjoying that sweet fruit with the smell of the ocean in the background. I ate them after swimming in the ocean and the sweetness was complimented by the bit of briny ocean water than inevitably got on the cherries and made it into my mouth. Back to the wine: it is complex with a long finish. A pleasure to drink and a wine that becomes more integrated and refined over 3 days of gradual consumption, stored in the fridge in between.
This is really good stuff and as good as many Cote Roties that I’ve had. I bet this will age magnificently for another 10 years at least.
For those of you that have the experience, how do the Jamet Côtes du Rhône, Cote Rotie, and Cote Brune compare to one another? Is there a big step up in each “upgrade”? Idk what the others are like, but this one is a banger!
I never had the Côte-Rôtie Brune, but I have tasted rest of the line-up. And yes there is a fair step up in quality at every wine in the line-up (not considering price here). Remember he also makes the Equivoque and young Côte-Rôtie cuvée.
I had the 2010 CDR at age twelve. It was good but probably also at its end of its plateau. So 5-10 years seems fitting for my preferences on these.
I also had the 2015 CDR back in May. Good wine
… and la Ladonne, and a Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah. Drink the latter young while you let the big ones evolve. A 2017 Cote Rotie a couple years ago was no fun.
Guess it depends on when you open them. 2016 Côte-Rôtie right at release was one of the best Syrah’s I ever tasted (I also had multiple 15-25 year old Jamet Côte-Rôtie)
A couple of weeks back my wife and I brought a 2006 Jamet Cote Rotie to a berserker dinner and it is interesting how much your notes actually resonate. That was our first Jamet experience. There was also a 2011 Jamet Cote Rotie at the table. The wines were very good, but needed lots of air. At first both seemed overwhelmed by coffee sensations, but with a few hours in a decanter, red fruit appeared and some minerality which completely altered the experience. I would have written them both off prior, so I am glad to have experienced them after that aeration.
I am curious to how much evolution the cotes du rhone experiences with air. Did your bottle get any significant air?
Very interesting! I had the wine over four days- first day was PnP, and I drank about 1/3 of the bottle over a few hrs. I put a rabbit stopper in and it sat in the fridge for 48 hrs. I drank the next 1/3 of a bottle on day 3. Again, rabbit stopper and into the fridge. The last 1/3 of the bottle was enjoyed on day 4. So that last 1/3 saw a good deal of aeration even though the wine never went into a proper decanter.
The wine definitely evolved significantly over the course of four days. I don’t recall coffee per se, but the flavors were definitely darker and the structure was tighter in the beginning. It was enjoyable on day one, I wouldn’t have written it off like you said about the Cote Rotie, but the beautiful red cherry fruit emerged as time went on. The body lightened as well, though never losing the muscular impression that I had from the start. The notes I wrote were on the last day.
Hope that helps- I probably should have described all this in the original TN, but it was already getting a bit long…Sounds like the situation you had with the Cote Rotie was similar, though even more extreme with this “lowly” CdR.
