Community Tasting Notes 19

• Quaffing in Colorado wrote: 91 points

  December 15, 2022 - Continues to improve. Solid qpr. See Wine Canuck's notes for the bouquet and palate profiles. I get black olives, but definitely olives, regardless of color. And gobs of blueberries, tar and granite. Still enough acidity/ structure to go the distance. Try again in a year.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• wagonwine Likes this wine: 92 points

  August 11, 2022 - Starting to strut its stuff. Really compelling nose that mixes fruit with tar, pepper, and earth. Drink now through 2030.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• Quaffing in Colorado Likes this wine: 91 points

  December 24, 2021 - Two years later, this is drinking significantly better. I concur with the previous two reviews.

  2 people found this helpful Comment

• Wine Canuck wrote: 92 points

  June 17, 2021 - Syrah Blind Tasting - June 2021: [Tasted Double Blind] Medium purple in the glass. Glass stainingly youthful. Lovely traditional young syrah nose of fresh blueberry, granite, bay leaf, green olive, fresh cracked pepper, and a light touch of violet. The palate is lovely entering on cool bright blueberry fruit, medium plus acid and medium tannin. The finish is medium in length and replays much of the blueberry, pepper and olive of the nose. This strikes me as perhaps Cornas or Cote Rotie in terms of quality level and I strongly suspected some stems in play here. Pretty easy 92-93. Alcohol level strikes me as 13% or less. Upon reveal I was very happy to see this was a great, over delivering syrah, full of character on which I now have had very consistent notes on.

  3 people found this helpful Comment

• JVG wrote:

  March 31, 2021 - Medium-deep magenta color. A bit rustic on the nose, with nondescript dark fruit aromas and some smokiness, along with maybe some charred meat. The overall impression I get from the nose is just a bit coarse, and it doesn't really have clear typicity or regional character. Northern Rhône syrah is probably my favorite category, and if I smelled this blind, I'm not at all sure I would identify it as such. On the palate, it's better, though a bit of a bruiser. Loads of blackberry and boysenberry and blueberry fruit, and a backbone of powerful, drying tannin. Not the most refined texture, but it has a certain brutalist appeal. Some alcoholic head on the finish, but not so much that it really bothers me. It kind of fits the personality of the wine.
  
  I'm a bit puzzles by this wine. I have had other bottlings by this producer—though not Crozes—that I've loved, so I was predisposed to like this, but the nose was very underwhelming. Drinking it, though, and with food and some time and air in the glass, I sort of came to enjoy its burly, woodsy personality. Not for everyone and probably not the best value, but I ended up enjoying it.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

Pro Reviews 4

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2016
• Type Red
• Producer François Villard
• Varietal Syrah
• Designation Certitude
• Vineyard n/a
• Country France
• Region Rhône
• SubRegion Northern Rhône
• Appellation Crozes-Hermitage

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 1 (0%)
• In Cellars 267 (48%)
• Consumed 285 (52%)

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