WineAlign

• By Michael Godel
  3/18/2019 (link)

  (Bastide Miraflors Syrah/Vieilles Vignes Grenache, Ap Côtes Du Roussillon red) Subscribe to see review text.

• By Sara d'Amato
  7/6/2017 (link)

  (Bastide Miraflors Syrah/Vieilles Vignes Grenache, Ap Côtes Du Roussillon red) Subscribe to see review text.

• By David Lawrason
  6/29/2017 (link)

  (Bastide Miraflors Syrah/Vieilles Vignes Grenache, Ap Côtes Du Roussillon red) Subscribe to see review text.

• By John Szabo, MS
  6/29/2017 (link)

  (Bastide Miraflors Syrah/Vieilles Vignes Grenache, Ap Côtes Du Roussillon red) Subscribe to see review text.

JancisRobinson.com

• By Tamlyn Currin
  5/20/2017 (link)

  (Lafage, Bastide Miraflors IGP Côtes Catalanes Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes Red) Subscribe to see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Lidless Eye, 10/24/2018

  (Lafage Bastide Miraflors) Hello friends. This is the fifth-ever offer of what I like to call Sauron wines: wines requiring the full attention of Full Pull’s great lidless eye. Basically, these are outstanding wines with long delays between tasting and availability. We haven’t had a Sauron offer since April 2016 (!), so yeah, the lidless eye has mostly been chillin’, keeping an “eye” on things via Palantir and just hanging out in Mordor with the Witch-King of Angmar. You know how it goes. But then earlier this year, the lidless eye stirred:Wine Advocate: Copyrighted material withheld. [Ed note: Sine Qua Non Syrahs will run you about $300/btl.] I’ve read *a lot* of Jeb reviews over the years. That’s about as effusive as he gets. And I was right there with him when we tasted this wine on August 2. We were ready to buy every remaining bottle in Seattle and offer this wine immediately. One small problem: there were like 10 cases left in the city. Which was a bummer. But only until I learned that another container was about to leave Marseille bound for Seattle, with an arrival in early November. Cue lidless eye. The latest intel from my stevedore connections (how confident are you that I’m joking? don't forget what my last name is…) is that the container will hit the Port of Seattle on November 7, two weeks from today. That ought to give our list members plenty of time to place order requests, and will allow us to advocate as forcefully as we can for as much wine as we can. I’m certain others of my retail and restaurant sistren and bretheren will catch wind of this wine’s arrival (some, I’m sure, are learning about it at this exact moment), but my hope is a smash-and-grab job: to get in and out before anyone realizes we were there. Okay, five grafs in and no explanation of the wine yet. Let’s get to it. Maison Lafage is located here, in Peripgnan, capital of French Catalonia. Jean-Marc and Eliane Lafage farm 160 hectares of vines, and the estate vineyards for their red wines are located mostly in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The vineyards look like this. The underlying schist-driven “soil” looks like this. And the winery looks like this. This particular cuvée is a joint project between the Lafage family and their American importer, Eric Solomon. It is only available in the United States (lucky for us!). It is a 70/30 blend of Syrah and Grenache, entirely from estate vineyards within the Cotes Catalanes IGP. Average vine age is an eye-popping 55 years. That kind of vine age at a fourteen-dollar tag is usually the provenance of Spanish wines. Then again, this winery is only about 25 miles north of the Spanish border, and Jean-Marc Lafage consults on projects in Spain, so maybe it’s not so crazy after all. The Syrah is aged in big old neutral 600L demi-muids; the Grenache in concrete. The finished wine clocks in at 14.5% listed alc and begins with a scintillating nose containing savory notes aplenty – black olive tapenade, demi-glace, star anise – over a core of expressive blackberry fruit. This is yet another textural marvel courtesy of the incredible 2015 vintage in Europe. It’s a palate-stainer through and through, fanning out and saturating the mouth with its charming succulence. As we enter braising season, I’m hard pressed to think of a more attractive red. At this tariff, you can pour half the bottle into the pot and class up the joint for your short ribs.