Winemaker Notes
An immense and pure wine with intense flavors and deep color, this is the perfect wine for aging.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This shows intense power, yet it’s channeled and restrained and combines structure and layering with a subtle touch to the complex aromas that include dark berries, dark plums, cocoa, bark, earth, smoke and baking spices. It's full-bodied with fine-grained tannins. Driven and textural with a long, focused finish. Drink from 2030.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Always the more concentrated, masculine, and structured wine in the lineup, the 2021 Côte Rote La Landonne offers smoky black fruits, pepper, stems, cured meats, and tapenade notes, as well as violets on the nose. It's medium to full-bodied, concentrated, and nicely structured on the palate, showing classic La Landonne character with a ripe, balanced, pure mouthfeel, ripe tannins, and outstanding length. This is one classy, complex, nuanced La Landonne that needs just 4-5 years of bottle age and will evolve beautifully over the following two decades.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Immediately recognizable for its signature notes of bell pepper and stem-inflected nuances wrapped in aromas of tobacco, baked dark berries and spices, the 2021 Côte-Rôtie La Landonne is medium- to full-bodied, dense and structured, with a layered core of fruit built around its characteristically stem-derived tannins. The mid-palate is slightly softer than in 2020, a natural consequence of the vintage’s profile, yet the wine remains perfectly balanced and unmistakably faithful to its identity.
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Vinous
The 2021 Côte-Rôtie La Landonne unfurls with prominent black olive, pencil shavings, cured meat, raspberry and wood spice. Fragrant orange blossom and violet nuances add a floral lift. Ripe and firm yet remarkably polished tannins provide solid structure. Showing more energy and ambition than La Mouline and La Turque, the 2021 La Landonne is a medium-bodied Côte-Rôtie with scope and concentration.
Barrel Sample: 93-96 -
Wine Spectator
Smoldering with cast iron mineral notes fused to plum paste, black tea, mesquite ash and cigar box, this is savory, brooding and complex. Shows lift and tangy acidity on the palate, with a kick of white pepper alongside warm spice cake and vanilla. The tannins are smoothing out nicely.
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Decanter
Very spicy on the nose, with sparky cinnamon along with the ashy, smoky notes from the whole bunch. Medium-bodied for La Landonne, this isn't a huge wine by any means, but it’s decidedly fresh. The tannins are quite drying for now, but certainly fine. Not as long or concentrated as many recent years, but will emerge a fresh, balanced and complex wine in time. 100% whole bunch used. At the beginning of its long maturation in 100% new oak barriques.
Barrel Sample: 94
The Guigal domain was founded in 1946 by Etienne Guigal in the ancient village of Ampuis, home of the wines of the Côte-Rôtie. In these vineyards that are over 2400 years old, you can still see the small terraced walls characteristic of the Roman period. Etienne Guigal arrived in this region in 1923 at the age of 14. He made wine for over 67 vintages and, at the beginning of his career, participated in the development of the Vidal-Fleury establishment.
Despite his young age, Marcel Guigal took over from his father in 1961 when the latter was victim to a brutal illness rendering him blind. Marcel's hard work and perseverance enabled the Guigals to buy out Vidal-Fleury in 1984, although the establishment retains its own identity and commercial autonomy. In 2000, the Guigals purchased the Jean-Louis Grippat estate in Saint-Joseph and Hermitage, as well as the Domaine de Vallouit in Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage, Saint-Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage.
In the cellars of the Guigal estate in Ampuis, the northern appellations of the Rhône Valley are produced and aged. These are the appellations of Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Hermitage, Saint-Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage. The great appellations of the Southern Rhône, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Tavel and Côtes-du-Rhône, are also aged in the Ampuis cellars.
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.