Browse Tag

syrah

Pain Levet

B. Levet 1998 Côte-Rôtie La Chavaroche (Rhône) – Elegant but with a twist at the end, bringing threads of sun and earth, pepper dust and silken potpourri, together in a well-knit weave, then slipping a little zap of the needle when one is least suspecting. As pleasures go, it’s more on the intellectual side than is perhaps typical for Côte-Rôtie, yet it’s friendly and accessible enough, and quite approachable now,…even though more age certainly won’t hurt. (8/08)

Buffy’s watcher

Gilles Barge 1995 Côte-Rôtie Côte Brune (Rhône) – Spicy earth and old pork, with a beautiful texture and a gorgeous finish. Ravishing. (2/08)

The search for intelligent bass

Edmunds St. John 2005 Syrah Bassetti (San Luis Obispo County) – Smoked salt on meat and fresh blueberry. Flawlessly poised, medium-bodied now vs. other Bassettis, but absolutely bubbling with potential. This will take a long time to unfold, and an even longer time to develop, but it should be a stunner when it does. (2/08)

Hardys boys

[logo]Hardys 1995 Shiraz “Eileen Hardy” (McLaren Vale/Padthaway) – Thick blueberry laden with eucalyptus. Simple, but if one accepts that simplicity (which is difficult given the price), it’s tasty enough. (2/08)

The sultan of Vernay

D&R (GAEC) Vernay 1998 Côte-Rôtie (Rhône) – Feral and yet weirdly elegant, like some jungle primitive dressed up in a tuxedo and somehow making it work. Except the tux is made of meat. And I guess a from-left-field elegance isn’t all that unusual for a Côte-Rôtie. The “fruit” (the scare quotes are always necessary in this appellation) is a dark and dried berry residue stomped by herds of somewhat leaky cattle, violets in the barnyard, and some leather as well. It’s a little chunky and obvious, but it is full of typicity, and that’s not someone one can always say about wines from here. (8/07)

Goin’ to the chapel

Jaboulet 1995 Hermitage “La Chapelle” (Rhône) – La Chapelle is one of the more maddening wines from this region; sometimes it’s terrific, sometimes it’s meager, and sometimes it’s simply disappointing. This is one of the former, though that may have more than a little to do with its surprisingly forward nature. Firm minerality is delivered, stone by stone and with a gentle hand, amidst a humid vapor of generalized meatiness and herbality. The wine is as structured and solemn as the little chapel that is its namesake (even if the grapes themselves are from elsewhere), but for whatever reason it’s drinking quite well at the moment. (8/07)

MTM spinoffs

Ogier 1998 Syrah Vin de Pays des Collines Rhodaniennes “La Rosine” (Rhône) – Still not entirely open, and there’s something Ogier does (or doesn’t do) to these wines that makes me wonder about TCA for the first few minutes after opening. With enough air, however, worries dissipate. There’s old bacon here…not rancid, but that’s lost its smoked porcine verve…grilled pork, and smoky leather over a bed of gravel; it’s the latter that forms, for me, a sort of signature for this wine, along with a more vibrant acidity than one often finds in Northern Rhônes. All that said, I believe I’ll leave the rest in the cellar for a few years yet. (8/07)

He knows

Edmunds St. John 2002 Syrah “The Shadow” (California) – One corked bottle, one soupy bottle (that I had; there may have been more), but the rest are as terrific as expected, with a rare balance of primary and developing syrah characteristics buoyed by fine structure and the orchestral tune-up that precedes complexity, For now, it’s still closed down, or at least in much need of a slower-paced awakening if one must drink it now. But it’ll be far better in a half-dozen years, or so. (8/07)