Community Tasting Note

Ben Andersen wrote:

Friday, January 6, 2006 - Initially, slightly closed nose that, with vigorous swirling, reveals confit of red fruit, notes of raisins, cocoa and spicebox - cloves and cinnamon. I'm not calling the wine "raisiny" overall, but there is a certain sweet rasin element which I rather enjoy. That element is more than balanced by the pure, ripe red cherry fruit. There's also a touch of alcohol to the aroma, which I would guess will be completely buried under the inevitable secondary / tertiary elements, as they evolve. This wine is a baby. When the second glass was poured, the fruit seemed brighter and more intense, and the aromas lept from the glass, rather than requiring some coaxing. Wow. This is gorgeous stuff. I would still call this wine rather old-school in style, and in no way would I place this in the "modern" camp. This is a structured, powerful, concentrated but not necessarily super-extracted wine. It's well made - not be be confused with "modern"... and, finally, its balance is amazing. It's broad and lingering on the palate, finishing with seemingly equal parts of both dry, dusty tannins and ripe fruit. I think this will evolve beautifully into a classically styled Chateauneuf, leaving people scratching their heads over the fact that the typicity of this wine was ever so hotly debated. For me, stylistically, it seems to come close to the 2000 Mon Aieul from Pierre Usseglio, but I really need to try that wine again to say for sure. Note: IMO, this wine, like most, will show best if drunk under the appropriate conditions, and a warm temperature could be quite unflattering. In the case of this bottle, it was 61 degrees. This was a bottle from a DC retailer that arrived in early Sept.

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