Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A blend of 95% Syrah and 5% Viognier, this perfumed, densely concentrated wine bursts with mulberry and plum flavors. The ruddy, rich mouthfeel is offset by streaks of acidity and spicy, savory crushed black pepper, anise and sage. It’s a potent, powerhouse wine with chalky but mouth filling tannins. Hold till 2021 at least—it should reward well through 2035. Fruit of the Vines, Inc.
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Decanter
Blackberry fruits and bloody notes – a promising nose. Sustained juice, inky depth, fresh and long. Much promise.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Unfortunately, two bottles of the La Chana were corked (always a troubling sign), but the 2015 Côte Rôtie La Germine showed beautifully. A blend of 97% Syrah and 3% Viognier brought up mostly in neutral barrels (20% were new), it’s an elegant, lightly textured, seamless 2015 that shows the house style in its balance and purity. Tapenade, bacon fat, flowers and lots of sweet red and black fruits emerge from this medium to full-bodied 2015 that can be drunk anytime over the coming 8-10 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Duclaux's 2015 Cote Rotie La Germine is another powerhouse Cote Rotie from this blockbuster vintage. Plum and cassis fruit is framed by hints of vanilla, while the velvety tannins are given focus and length on the finish by crisp acids. The overall effect is one of harmony and balance.
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James Suckling
Some reductive, meaty and ripe blackberry fruits with a wealth of sweet and spicy complexity. There's an attractive graphite-like dark stony edge, too. The palate has a wealth of sweetly succulent mulberry and red plum fruit. Fine pastry-like tannins. Drink now.
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Wine Spectator
Very solid, with a tightly coiled core of red currant, blackberry and bitter cherry fruit wrapped with licorice root, tobacco and iron notes. The singed alder frame gently guides everything along, finishing with nice tension on the finish. Best from 2019 through 2027.
Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
The cultivation of vines here began with Greek settlers who arrived in 600 BC. Its proximity to Vienne was important then and also when that city became a Roman settlement but its situation, far from the negociants of Tain, led to its decline in more modern history. However the 1990s brought with it a revival fueled by one producer, Marcel Guigal, who believed in the zone’s potential. He, along with the critic, Robert Parker, are said to be responsible for the zone’s later 20th century renaissance.
Where the Rhone River turns, there is a build up of schist rock and a remarkable angle that produces slopes to maximize the rays of the sun. Cote Rotie remains one of the steepest in viticultural France. Its varied slopes have two designations. Some are dedicated as Côte Blonde and others as Côte Brune. Syrahs coming from Côte Blonde are lighter, more floral, and ready for earlier consumption—they can also include up to 20% of the highly scented Viognier. Those from Côte Brune are more sturdy, age-worthy and are typically nearly 100% Syrah. Either way, a Cote Rotie is going to have a particularly haunting and savory perfume, expressing a more feminine side of the northern Rhone.