He said, she Cèdres

Jaboulet 1995 Châteaneuf-du-Pape “Les Cèdres” (Rhône) – As each of what was once a fair stock of Jaboulets leaves my cellar, I breathe a sigh of relief. They just aren’t my style, which is my dodgy way of saying that I simply can’t understand the praise lavished on the wines by ostensibly right-thinking people. That they’re hard and chronically abused by their structure is almost a given, but the tumescence of an Hermitage is one thing, while a similar lack of yield in a Châteauneuf-du-Pape is quite another. There are, here, liquefied black peppercorns and what might, once, have been a presence that once, long ago, glimpsed a black and white painting of a blackberry from a few blocks away. Otherwise, all is dust and solidity, now eroded and crumbling but still architecturally sound. It is not, I hasten to say, a bad wine, and there’s certainly intellectual interest. But my enjoyment has dried up only somewhat more slowly than the wines. (5/12)


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