Community Tasting Note

jkscully Likes this wine:

Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - This wine needed a few hours with some air exposure, but it came together in a nice way. Dark chocolate and deep-blue berries dominated the palate, but there were also overtones of vanilla and black pepper. On day 3, some woody mushrooms and violet showed up. The brambly fruit was impressive and I don’t think that I’ve experienced such intense fruit from a European wine before. This is clearly a very polished wine, but it was made in an international sytle and I felt that it lacked a sense of French terroir: no garrigue, herbal notes, or any of those characteristics that would make a wine unique or interesting.
Wines without distinctive character are difficult to match perfectly with food (by contrast, I’m remembering how, just recently, I was able to find some brilliant food matches for some $20 bottles of Loire Chenins recently). Having said as much, I think that this wine had about 10 years of life left and might have gained some complexity with some extended bottle ageing. If I had more, I would wait another 5 years to try another bottle.

I found myself recalling the Justin Isosceles that I drank earlier in the year. The palate and alcohol levels (15% for both) were similar, but the Justin was made from Caberenet, which, in my opinion, can reach higher than the Syrah, Mouvedre, Grenache, and Carignan blend in this wine. The Justin Isosceles was about $20 cheaper. In other words, I think I can get better in this style for cheaper. This wine is supposedly about as good as you can do for dry red wines in Roussillon. The quality is high, but I’m not sure that it draws me to the region.

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