Les Alexandrins Maison Cote-Rotie 2017
- Decanter
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Wine
Spectator -
Wine
Enthusiast -
Robert
Parker -
Jeb
Dunnuck -
James
Suckling
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Currently this wine needs to be decanted at least an hour before serving. Drink in it’s youth with slow roasted lamb will be a great match for this wine.
Blend: 98% Syrah, 2% Viognier
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Concentrated and elegant, this is made from the Les Roziers vineyard in Côte-Rotie, where schist soils give a flinty, rosehip edge to the wine. Fine-grained tannins accompany powerful and intense notes of liquorice and cassis, with some white pepper spice. This is silky, tender and finely worked - a brilliant example of what Côte-Rotie can do, proving itself to be one of the most exciting appellations in France. It will be bottled towards the end of 2018 and I can’t wait to try it again in a few years. Drinking Window 2022 - 2034
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Wine Spectator
This sports a slightly brawny edge, with steeped black currant and dark plum compote notes, infused liberally with bay leaf, savory and tobacco details and picking up pepper, singed alder and warm cast iron accents on the finish. Shows lots of range and character.
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Wine Enthusiast
Whispers of smoke and bacon fat mingle into ripe but elegantly restrained cassis and black plum on the nose of this finessed Syrah. In its youth, it's vibrantly fruity, edged by an exhilarating vein of acidity and lingering hints of black pepper. Approachable already for its fine, feathery tannins, the wine should gain earthier complexity and perfume well through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A solid négociant effort, the 2017 Côte Rôtie Maison Les Alexandrins offers mocha and black olive aromas and flavors, a ripe, supple—almost lush—texture and a long, vibrant finish. It should drink well for at least 6-7 years.
Range: 91-93 -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Côte Rôtie (98% Syrah and 2% Viognier) is a beautiful wine from this estate. Blackberries, toasted spices, spring flowers, and hints of minerality all flow to a ripe, sexy wine that has plenty of fruit, sweet tannins, and a great finish. It's going to drink nicely right out of the gate yet evolve for 10-15 years.
Range: 91-93 -
James Suckling
A attractively spicy and complex young wine that offers super fragrant dark cherries on the nose. Chocolate and dark-plum flavors build on the palate. Holds round, fresh and upbeat, on a fine-tannin finish. Drink or hold.
Maison & Domaine Les Alexandrins is the story of three friends combining the savoir-faire they learn from their parents and grandparents and the fruits from beautiful and historic terroirs. Nicolas Jaboulet, the 6th generation of a wine growing family in Tain l’Hermitage, Guillaume Sorrel, son of Marc Sorrel of Domaine Sorrel in Hermitage, and Alexandre Caso, a specialist in the terroirs of the Northern Rhône, joined forces in 2012. They began working parcel by parcel in Crozes-Hermitage for the wines of Maison Nicolas Perrin. In 2015, the name was changed to Domaine et Maison Les Alexandrins. Today, Maison and Domaine Les Alexandrins produces Northern Rhône wines that are true and classic expressions of the Northern Rhône.
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.