Community Tasting Notes 7

• raysclafani wrote:

  April 11, 2024 - This was the night Beth got me the barrel from Verite for our Anniversary.

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• Matt Scott Likes this wine: 99 points

  March 12, 2022 - This is very well framed and the tension is addicting. Cottony tannins and an endowed, flowing finish. Full in body, with grip and an amazing aging ability. Blackberries, chocolate pudding, plumeria, river rock, cranberries and flower shop, with a little cedar. Such staying power and backbone, as this unfolds with ease. There’s cherries and hope chest on the palate. Addicting and a true joy. Drink 2024 -.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• Rajagopalanator Likes this wine: 96 points

  March 12, 2022 - Infanticide to have opened this now. Violet nose. Strawberry, light cherry, green apple, Medium-high acidity. Big tannins to finish.

• MC2 Wines Likes this wine:

  March 11, 2022 - Return to Napa; 3/6/2022-3/13/2022 (Wineries and various restaurants): Bright and dark fruit and drinking very well even if it is too young. A bit quieter than it sometimes might be and certainly nicely restrained. It’s got a long life ahead of it and this might have been a more quiet phase (all of this is splitting hairs, each of the Verite wines were some of the best of the whole trip so really I’m comparing more to what I know they can be).

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• sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 98 points

  February 14, 2022 - 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: Dark florals, wet soil, tobacco, black cherries, cassis, a light and contrasting note of mixed red fruit, spice and a bit of graphite for contrast. This wine just bursts out of the glass with aromatic intensity. I found this to be the most accessible, balanced and integrated of the new releases, yet not at the cost of leaving no room for further development. 97-98 at present, with a possibility for perfection in 5-10+ years, making it not only the one of current releases I’d be most likely buy to drink today, but the one I’d be most likely to buy to put down for a medium-long sleep.

  4 people found this helpful Comments (6)

Pro Reviews 7

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2016
• Type Red
• Producer Vérité
• Varietal Red Bordeaux Blend
• Designation La Joie
• Vineyard n/a
• Country USA
• Region California
• SubRegion Sonoma County
• Appellation Sonoma County
• UPC Code 8055969010159

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 8 (1%)
• In Cellars 774 (88%)
• Consumed 99 (11%)

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