Community Tasting Notes 4

• Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 91 points

  February 20, 2024 - I opened this bottle last night and resealed it after tasting an ounce. The fruit and spice were opulent to smell, but I found the tannins impenetrable, severely drying, and joyless.
  Now, 24 hours later, it meets the moment to relative advantage, or at least incrementally. The bouquet, mutually voluntary as it is, advances a stunning mixture of blueberry coulis and iodine/graphite. A drink is intensely mineral, braced and tannic, and ever so reluctantly productive of ink pulp and high-strung acidity. Repetition has the effect of gathering the experience into something coherent and attractive. Along that path it reveals interesting theories of new black leather, violets, muscadine jam, impacted black cherry solids, moss, pavement, and brittle orchard pistils.
  A glancing taste of this is arguably a waste of time and attention. But even my meager resources of patience and charity reveal it to be wondrous, a dark and withheld testimony of granite and cured vigor.
  ________
  48 hours after unsealing, and 24 hours after drinking the contents, its astonishing how delicious are the dregs from the fraction that remained in the bottle after decanting the last full pour. It was the best drink from this bottle of them all.

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• Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 92 points

  September 1, 2023 - Very dry with Côt extracts, and savory root/mineral saps.
  NOSE: more aromatic on this occasion. It enters with iodine, heather, and tar, before softening. Within a few minutes it reveals a tranquilizing bouquet of blackcurrant, marine ink, and opium. MOUTH: dramatic contrast is apparent as the start becomes the finish. From heavy sheets of sticky intaglio, cassis, licorice, and chicory entrain a subversive stain of blackberries weeping sugar. As this action mounts, load-bearing mechanisms of poured iron close in. Rigid tannins groan in resistance and invite scrutiny. Delight in the fact that this structure derives from crop and culture: repurposed aromatic stems, wood mushrooms, and salt-cured hard herbs—nothing engineered or cosmetic about it. Repetition and adjustment to all this imposing form allows for the expression of punchy, bundled black berry acidity—very fresh; durable and persistent even as the tannins vacate in a dry gust of mint and pencil.
  Sinfully fruited and freshly tannic on release in 2019, this is graduated now, and prepared for years of active use in the cellar. The finished form is evident.

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• Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 91 points

  October 13, 2022 - A brief progress report:
  Seductive blue and black mash to smell. Pencil lead. Ink. A mouthful is a high-contrast negotiation between rigid structure and ripe, botanical yield. Bitter bones. Hard. Mentholated prune. Urgent black berry extract. Blanched, salty, sous bois. Algae. Sort of a North Sea Cornas grape vibe here. A long, determined finish is mouthwatering as it releases bright pulses, of sharp acidity and savage, thick fruit-skin. This cellar item is unwinding ever-so-slowly. Wait 12 months before drinking the next bottle. (Update: the last 2 oz. found 9 days later (such a scrupuous decant!) are a notch more delicious and forthcoming, with no oxidative faults. +0.2 points lol.)

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• Putnam Weekley Likes this wine: 91 points

  March 2, 2022 - NOSE: lead pencil lacquered with blackberry. MOUTH: clearly this vintage is heading in a good direction. The event is still dominated by austere, suave structure, only now the thriving acidity is starting to carry musky little notes of ripe plum, blackberry, and blueberry. It’s like a thumb-wrestling match. Defensive fruit is positioning for offense. Singed tobacco leaf. Iodine weeping from crawling vines. Rain on tuffaceous earth. There’s a pith-textured quality to the tannins. Lord. Chewing on a drink releases a precise web of fine salt structure, creating capillary action for the expression of robust, inky berry flavor. This is a seething, emergent, still pupating beast, and a pleasure to drink, especially with jamon de Bayonne and mild NY cheddar. CONTEXT: I bought a case of this vintage in late 2019 and drank several bottles over the next year. I observed it submerge into a classic dumb phase. Now I've waited 16+ months and feel rewarded—as much by the delicious drink as by the validation of my theory. Six more bottles exist. I'll plan to drink them over the next decade.

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Pro Reviews 2

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2018
• Type Red
• Producer Domaine de la Pépière
• Varietal Côt
• Designation La Pépie
• Vineyard n/a
• Country France
• Region Loire Valley
• SubRegion n/a
• Appellation Val de Loire

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 0 (0%)
• In Cellars 1 (25%)
• Consumed 3 (75%)

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