2016 Vérité La Muse

Community Tasting Notes (6) Avg Score: 96.6 points

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  4/3/2022 - sirpat00 wrote: 98 Points

  Tasted at the Matter of Taste Zurich 2022 Walkaround Tour, hence only brief notes: A bombastic nose boasting amazingly sexy notes of coffee, chocolate, mocha which coupled with a cool fruit of blue berries creates an intriguing contrast. Juicy and meticulously textured palate.

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  3/12/2022 - Matt Scott Likes this wine: 97 Points

  Ripe raspberries, olive tapenade, stone, blackberries, teak, oolong tea and Freesia. So much chiseled body and poise, with feathery tannins and a long, sumptuous finish. There’s backbone, but an easiness as well. A true Merlot-based tour de force. This unfolds nicely, whilst the body is full. Drink 2023 - 2033.

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  3/12/2022 - Rajagopalanator wrote: 96 Points

  Mossy nose. Ruby, cherry, slate, charcoal. Moderate acidity and tannins. Clearly needs aging but already drinking well.
  
  Right bank Bordeaux dropped into Sonoma - it’s refreshing to see wines break from the Parker formula.

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  3/11/2022 - MC2 Wines Likes this wine:

  Return to Napa; 3/6/2022-3/13/2022 (Wineries and various restaurants): Not the standard La Muse as I think of it. It’s darker fruits. Feels a bit less Merlot dominated. There’s an undercurrent of brett so maybe that is affecting it. Blows off with some time in the glass. Then it’s blackberries and moderate tannin and good structure.

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  2/14/2022 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 96 Points

  This is the first time I've written tasting notes from a commercial tasting. My reasons for my reticence in the past have been many: 1) sample sizes too small, 2) too many tastes, even when I spit, resulting in a dulled palate, 3) uncertainty about aeration, 4) short drinking window not permitting seeing the wines’ development, and 5) lack of food accompaniment leaving off a key aspect of my notes. 1-4 were largely not issues here, as the tastes were generous, and I was invited to revisit any of the tastes; I had almost 2 hours to watch the wines interact with air; there were only 4 wines, and the wines, at least the 2016s, were open for approximately four hours before being poured. The wines were served at perfect, cool cellar temperature. This was the only tasting I did on my 3 day trip to Sonoma.
  
  It had been 2 years since I’d done a commercial tasting, and while I knew I’d been missing it, I realized how much once I got started. The Verite facility felt like it had been finished 10 minutes before I arrived and was comfortable and well-appointed in a slightly generic way.
  
  The overall experience had the overall luxe feel you’d expect from a winery of this stature. Michael, my host, was a highly educated (when was the last time you had an Ivy Leaguer pour wines for you?), knowledgeable (far more so than I generally, and at least able to go toe to toe with me on my beloved Toscanas) and urbane sommelier. The tasting was one on one and unhurried. The $175 cost, by far the most I’ve paid for an individual tasting, and up significantly from $75 5 years ago (according to what I read online), but the quality of the entire experience made it money well spent from my perspective.
  
  Although the 3 bottlings are very distinct Bordeaux blends (the Joie CS dominant, the Desir CF and the Muse merlot), they shared, as I experienced them, a number of similar attributes, per the below. To the extent any of the 4 diverged, I’ve noted that under the particular bottling, as well individual traits of the wines.
  
  All that said, for all wines, except as noted specifically:
  Medium ruby-purple, medium+ bodied, thick legs. Medium tannins and acidity, in all cases other than as noted, already well integrated, not a trace of heat. Very good complexity, good intensity, tremendous persistence. All wines are highly enjoyable at present, elegant, generally balanced and integrated, yet, with the possible exception of the ’07 Muse, strongly hinted that they will hit a higher gear at some point. Almost exclusively dark fruited, led by cherries and cassis. The wines skew more Bordeaux than Napa (yep, I know that they’re all from Sonoma, but bear with me: I don’t think that there’s a developed Sonoma Bordeaux profile the way there is for Napa), although there’s a brightness and power to the fruit that does place them in the 707. Other than the persistence noted above and its sibling, depth, there’s a trait to these wines, and the handful of other Verites I’ve had over the years that, particularly relative to their Northern California Bordeaux varietal kin, in the week since my tasting, I’ve struggled to put a label on. But the best I’ve been able to come up is restraint or minimalism, though never at the expense of generosity, Miles Davis doing Birth of Cool over Bitches Brew, Mies over Helmut Jahn, Hemingway over Bellow, felines over canines. Perhaps this is why they are a bit of a third rail with some of my CT friends.
  
  TN: Black cherries and plums, cassis, dark chocolate, charcoal, more dark florals and spicebox with an overall appealing savoriness. To my surprise after too many mediocre California merlots, this wine had the most conspicuous structure, and the tannins, in particular, stood out, slightly distractingly, at the start of the tasting. Conversely, this wine showed the most development over the course of the tasting, and became a far more elegant animal, so that the difference between the last sip and the first was the most varied. Still, unless you have multiple bottles of this, I'd counsel holding for at least another 3-5+ years. 95-96+

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