Introduction

After much prodding and planning Brad Kane finally pulled off a much awaited and often postponed Domaine Trevallon vertical last night. While my experience with Trevallon has been somewhat limited I do recall three separate explorations each spaced about 5 years apart over the past two decades so this evenings offering was timely indeed.

In my past encounters with Trevallon the wines always struck me as solid, slightly rustic wines with a split personality. I don�t recall exactly which vintages I tried, just the general time frames, but I do recall that my impression of the wines was that each vintage tended to be dominated by either the Syrah, or the Cabernet Sauvignon. Since the blend is 50/50 this was never particularly surprising but with the much broader sampling this evening I found that what I had perceived as pretty much black or white was in fact shaded with many tones of grey.

Overall the wines showed quite well being complete, balanced, and well structured. I have no information regarding the winemaking details at the estate but felt that the 1985 had a character intrinsically different from the subsequent wines. It felt more extracted with tannins that showed a bit more bitterness than the subsequent wines. Nonetheless the wines performed with admiral consistency of quality yet offered an unusually broad range of aromatics and flavors as each vintage expressed the best of what it had to offer.

In this regard the line-up was indeed a bit surprising. As noted there seemed to be quite a range of greys here. To better illustrate my thoughts let me instead say that the reds of the Cabernet and the blues of the Syrah produced a wide range of purples. This can be contrasted with say the reds of the typical cepage of Bordeaux, with a touch of blacks producing a range of reds, or the wide range of colors that would make up Chateuneuf-du-pape producing a consistently mottled effect.

So in this paradigm the experiential range that Trevallon offered across vintages was greater than I had experienced at comparable vertical tastings. This is the wines strongest suit. The wines offer a very unique expression of each vintage, and the winemaking, while at a very high level, seems to be geared toward expressing the vintage as opposed to achieving a particular ideal.

Closing

I admire what Trevallon is doing and has achieved but I would be moved to repurchase only a few of the wines tasted tonight. As a group they were solid wines that worked very well at the dinner table but their appeal really was as a group as some of the wines on their own were a bit pedestrian. The great variety from vintage to vintage, while making this grouping more interesting, also makes it less likely that one knows what when is getting when trying a vintage on it�s own. In any event thanks Brad for putting this together it was a wonderful evening and a great experience.