Winemaker Notes
Beautiful deep-red color with shiny reflections. Very elegant, the nose offers a superb aromatic bouquet with aromas of small red fruit punctuated by notes of smoked bacon and cold ash. Plenty finesse on the palate, dense, intense, suave, with silky and velvety tannins and a long finish supported by good acidity. A wine definitely under the sign of elegance.
This wine will go perfectly with a tender lamb packed with flavor.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Creamy in feel, with bacon fat and toasted aniseed overlaying dark plum and steeped cherry flavors. Suave yet salty, with an iron element and still-chewy tannins bringing shape through the toasty, smoked alder–laced finish, with a hint of olive tapenade. Syrah and Viognier.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Darker fruits (blackberries, black cherries), graphite, smoked earth, and peppery notes all emerge from the 2020 Côte Rôtie, a solidly built, medium-bodied, balanced Côte Rôtie. It has good purity and precision on the palate, as well as fine tannins, and will benefit from just short-term cellaring.
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.