Community Tasting Note

sfwinelover1 Likes this wine:

Friday, August 5, 2022 - First of 2 ($99.99) from the big box wine store about 6 weeks ago. On the nose and palate, moderate notes (which became explosive at the 90 minute mark, per the below) of chiffon-like red raspberries, earthy minerality, camphor and lighter notes of black tea, tar and garrigue. Medium garnet darkening and purpling over time, medium+ bodied, thick legs. Vibrant acidity already surprisingly well balanced and even integrated, medium+ tannins, and the most lithe 15.5% abv you’ll ever find (CT friend LotB’s point about it being almost Faively-like duly noted). Fairly primary off the pour but with increasing, and VG+ complexity over 3 nights, VG++ persistence, VG+ intensity. Well, sometimes you gotta break your own rules, and one of mine would be, as a regular drinker of different vintages of this bottling (in the past 5 years or so, 1998-2001, 2003-2011) much before its eight birthday, and often, well thereafter. But hey, I’m on CT for a reason, and when I see people whose opinions I trust bestowing 95-100 scores on something now, something which could close up at some point, or we could end up at sword’s point with some global bad guy which could threaten my wine cellar, or, well, more fun times with the Palo Alto Spa, not to mention that I have another bottle, and was considering, based on the notes, buying more, well, my corkscrew beckoned. While it’s hard to know handle the counterfactual of how I’d feel if I saved this bottle for 5-10-20 years, it hasn’t sucked the past 3 nights. Intense and focused with dancing red raspberries leading the way out of the bottle, the olfactory hit another gear with about 90 minutes of air, smelling like the finest Parisian parfumerie in the midst of a rose garden, with more red fruits (rhubarb, red currants, red and black cherries) and orange peel being joined by anise and some rocky minerality (Close des Papes notes so familiar to those from the aughts like funk, smoked meats, heavy garrigue and figs were almost or completely absent to my palate). Its complexity may have peaked at the 3 hour mark, at which point I recorked it, but this has held well over 3 nights, even if it didn’t change much, for better or worse, after the first 2-3 hours. A magical complement to lamb chops—making up for the exhausted ‘06 of this bottling last month—this is just great as a sipping wine, for those so inclined. While fluctuation seems to be more likely up than down over the medium to longer term, how much so, and how straight that path will be falls into the who knows basket; it’s not infanticide to drink this not only delicious, but beguiling, quaff stat. While my near term purchases will more likely be measured in bottles than cases—I mean, short of this being 100+ at the moment, which, per the below, it isn’t for me—is how I roll anyway, this is pretty great stuff and right there already with my favorite Rhones. Its youth has made it unusually hard for me to grade, as I’ve flip flopped between thinking that this is currently an excellent wine with potential for possible greatness (95+) to believing that it’s a monumental wine heading for the pantheon (98). I end up somewhere in the middle, 96+, CT consensus, and looking forward to my next date, probably in 5 years (yep, health issues aside, I’m one of the more patient folks on the site). Get some.

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