FRENCH WINE

WINE SPECTATOR 95 POINTS - "This offers a mix of red and black cherry paste flavors, infused with a range of bay leaf, savory, tobacco, olive and chalk notes. Shows a grippy feel through the finish, with the chalky minerality driving through. Best from 2022 through 2038."

#57 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2019

DECANTER 97 POINTS - "From lieux-dits Mazard and La Côte, 80% destemmed. Sun-warmed herbs accompany sand, lavender and raspberry on the nose. It has good aromatic freshness and definition, and the full-bodied palate is also clean, super-fresh and lively. It's dense and ripe, defined by serrated tannins, keen acidity and a mouth-coating character. This is full of character, a very classic expression of Cornas that's not massive, but is detailed, clear and sinewy with mineral hints. Seriously good this year."

JAMES SUCKLING 98-99 POINTS - "Plenty of sexy graphite and dark stony aromas cast across showy dark fruits seen here, all presented in a vibrant and seductive form. Plenty of spices and fragrant lift, too. The palate is astonishingly rich, layered and seamlessly complete. The tannins are dense, compressed and commanding, whereas the tension is entrancing. Flavors run from red to darker fruits. The finish is already long and majestic. Exceptional wine"

DECANTER 97 POINTS - "Low yields of just 27hl/ha this year due to coulure, instead of a more normal 37hl/ha - so there might be no 2017 Renaissance produced. A tasting of the main constituent parts from barrel suggests a potent, ripe, tannic style. The young Reynards is rich in fruit with good acidity, if high in alcohol; Sabarotte is resolutely Cornas: impenetrable, resinous, firm and saline; Petit Côte and La Côte are fleshy and rich; the older Reynards admirably complete, with a massive, ripe tannic load. Pierre compares it to the 2009, albeit more structured. You'll need to keep this for a while, but it will be rewarding when finally ready."

94-96 POINTS VINOUS MEDIA, JOSH RAYNOLDS - "Inky, vivid purple. Highly perfumed, mineral-laced black and blue fruit, violet, smoked meat and incense qualities on the nose. Fleshy, sweet and expansive on the palate, offering densely packed yet surprisingly lively boysenberry, candied licorice, spicecake and violet flavors enlivened by an undercurrent of juicy acidity. Deftly blends richness and finesse and finishes extremely long and youthfully tannic, leaving floral pastille, star anise and dark berry liqueur notes behind."

VINOUS 92-94 POINTS: "Bright purple. A complex, expansive bouquet evokes candied dark berries, olive, smoked meat and incense, and floral and mineral notes build steadily. Sweet, focused and penetrating on the palate, offering sappy boysenberry, cherry and violet pastille flavors braced by a spine of juicy acidity. Impressively blends concentration and energy and finishes with impressive, gently tannic persistence."

"Opaque ruby. Deep-pitched black and blue fruit, floral pastille, olive and smoky mineral character on the nose. Sweet, spicy and penetrating on the palate, offering juicy blueberry and cherry cola flavors underscored by a peppery quality that adds back-end spiciness and cut. Youthfully firm tannins add shape to the finish, which hangs on with impressive, dark-berry-driven tenacity." VINOUS

VINOUS 92 - 94 POINTS - "I tasted the components that will ultimately make up this wine, as usual. #1) Chaillets: olive paste, smoky bacon and dark berry liqueur qualities, with subtle floral and mineral undertones. #2): Dardouille: intensely spicy and focused, displaying powerful blue fruit character, impressive depth and building violet and spice notes. #3) Baschasson: heady, mineral-accented black and blue fruit qualities, along with suave incense and potpourri nuances and mounting spiciness. This is looking to shape up as an uncommonly powerful wine for the vintage, but the buffering mineral and spice character could bring its energy level up – the fruit is really blasting away right now."


Distributor Notes: "The project of Offerus has evolved since its first vintage of 1995. In the beginning, 100% of the wine was purchased from producers of high quality/ small quantity St Joseph domaines. Since the late 1990's, Jean Louis Chave began purchasing and replanting parcels of St. Joseph. Currently, over 60% of the Offerus comes from these young vines owned by the Domaine JL Chave, which sells off the juice in bulk to JL Chave Selection for elevage and bottling. The wine is fermented in large, wood, open top fermenters and then finished in old oak demi-muids (just like the Domaine St. Joseph)."

Very dark. There is an aroma of stylish black berry fruit inside the bouquet, which has an oaked, grilled outer, black cherry, the fruit clear, some nutshells also. This is sleekly fruited, with crisp tannins, mineral, vin de terroir within the oak. There is a close link between nose and palate. It drives along on a smooth route, presents very fine juice. Graphite and close-knit juice appear on the finish. "It is square, runs straight down the line, has graphite, minerality.

Les Peyrouses displays purple color, with an aroma full of fruits and spices. On the palate, the fruitiness with notes of licorice and hints of pepper. The wine is full and well rounded, with supple tannins. A typical Cotes du Rhone Syrah, full of freshness and finesse, with a good tannic structure.

ROBERT PARKER 95-97 POINTS: "The tiny-production 2015 Saint Joseph Le Paradis Saint Pierre (100% Syrah aged in 5% new barrels) is a blockbuster that needs to be purchased by the case. Its inky color is followed by loads of liquid blackberry, cassis, crushed rocks, and damp earth/forest floor aromas and flavors. This full-bodied, ultra-pure, yet gorgeously concentrated effort has enough tannin to warrant 3-4 years of bottle age and will keep for two decades."

JEB DUNNUCK 90-92 POINTS: "The largest production effort is the 2016 Saint Joseph Silice, which offers lots of blackberry jam, Asian spice, and peppered meat aromas and flavors. This ripe, sexy, beautifully textured 2016 is going to be another terrific value for the true wine lovers and drinkers out there. I continue to love the wines from the young Jerome Coursodon, who pulls from roughly 16 hectares of vines all in the southern part of Saint Joseph, mostly just outside the village of Mauves. The 2015s are monster, blockbuster styled efforts that I suspect won’t appeal to the traditionalists out there, but are singular wines. The 2016s are more elegant and finesse-driven, yet still pack in more sweet fruit than just about everyone else out there."

WINE ADVOCATE 95+ POINTS - "The 2016 Cornas Confidence is the flagship cuvée of the estate and comes from the La Côte and Tézier lieux-dits in Cornas, both of which are shallow, granitic parcels. It's slightly tighter and more focused compared to the sexier Empreintes and has more cassis and blackberry fruits as well as lots of cedarwood, ground pepper, and earth-like aromatics. This full-bodied, concentrated 2016 has beautiful purity, a ripe, layered texture, and building tannins. It’s a serious 2016 to drink over the coming 10-15 years."

WINE ADVOCATE 95 POINTS - "The 2016 Cornas Empreintes features hints of cedar, brown sugar and dried spices layered over its plummy fruit (it was aged in 20% new oak, with the bulk in older wood). Full-bodied, supple and ripe, it's charming but with more stuffing than that word suggests, showing ample concentration and soft, dusty tannins on the long finish. It's a terrific Cornas to drink over the next 10-12 years."

JEB DUNNUCK 95 POINTS - "Deep purple-colored, the 2016 Cornas Empreintes is a smoking good effort. Blackberries, plums, cured meats, pepper, and earthy notes all flow from this rounded, sexy, powerful Cornas that has beautiful mid-palate depth and density as well as a great finish. Drink this smoking good 2016 any time over the coming decade."

WINE ADVOCATE 91 POINTS - "The 2016 Saint Joseph Les Coteaux looks as good from bottle as it did from tank last year. Richly concentrated and velvety, this medium to full-bodied beauty features savory notes of black olive, allspice and clove, backed by supple tannins and a long finish."

The steep slopes of the northern Rhône present a challenging terrain where farming is only feasible through terracing. On these terraced slopes, the Faurys’ vines take full advantage of the southern and southeastern sun exposure, benefitting from optimum ripening. A combination of the predominately granitic soil, partial de-stemming (in about 70% of the grapes), soft crushing of the grapes with a pneumatic press, and temperature controlled fermentation offer a liveliness and freshness that one does not often find in wines from the northern Rhône. There’s a real attention to detail here, and nothing is done in haste.

Francois Villard La Brocarde comes from vines planted on the Cote Blonde with up to 13% Viognier in the blend. The wine takes its name from the La Brocarde lieu-dit. The berries are whole cluster fermented and up to 30% of the grapes are destemmed. The wine is aged in between 80% new, French oak barrels to 100% new, oak, depending the character of the vintage. The wine spends close to 18 months in barrel before bottling. The production is quite small as only 100 cases are produced in an average year.

WINE SPECTATOR 92 POINTS - "A bright, fresh, mineral-driven style, with mouthwatering white pepper and rose petal notes gilding a core of damson plum and blood orange flavors. The long, sleek finish is mouthwatering. Drink now through 2030."

JEB DUNNUCK 96-98 POINTS: "Scheduled to be bottled just after this visit, the 2015 Côte Rôtie Château D'Ampuis reveals a deep ruby/purple color as well as an extraordinary bouquet of smoked black fruits, caramelized blackcurrants, leady herbs, ground pepper, and earth. It's deep, rich, massively concentrated, and a powerhouse of a wine that’s going to need bottle age, but wow, what a wine! The big news at the Guigal estate is the purchase of Domaine de Nalys in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The family has always wanted an estate in the South, and Nalys is an unrealized treasure trove of awesome terroir and old vines, both of which I’ve no doubt will be maximized by this talented family. In addition, the former winemaker at Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Jacques Desvernois, has joined the team, and while it’s not clear exactly what his role will be, I suspect he will largely lead the charge at Domaine de Nalys. Either way, Desvernois is an incredible talent and can only add to what is already a well-oiled machine. As to the wines reviewed in this report, I was able to taste multiple vintages of each of the cuvées and have listed the wines by cuvée as opposed to by vintage, which is how we tasted through the wines."

WINE SPECTATOR 97 POINTS: "A gorgeous core of steeped raspberry, boysenberry and fig fruit gives this a showy side. A lush structure flows underneath, while long echoes of warm ganache, black tea and espresso linger. The fruit keeps this in the suave and alluring camp overall, though there’s plenty of grip for cellaring. Best from 2022 through 2042."

ROBERT PARKER 95-97 POINTS: "The 2015 Côte Rôtie Château d'Ampuis finally approaches the lofty goals set for it by the Guigal family. It’s a bit toasty from the barrel but full-bodied, ripe and concentrated. Loaded with tannins and black raspberry fruit, it’s silky at the same time, leaving behind lingering traces of mocha and roasted meat on the long finish."

WINE ADVOCATE 98-100 POINTS: "Of all the terrific single-vineyard Côte Rôties I tasted at Guigal this year, I’m most confident that this wine will ultimately reach perfection after bottling. The 2015 Côte Rôtie La Landonne is incredibly rich and concentrated, yet it remains detailed and complex, with plum and cassis flavors accented by hints of pencil shavings, espresso, black olives, roasted meat and dark chocolate. Full-bodied and solidly built, it combines that power with a velvety feel and a nearly endless finish. Wow."

Paul Wasserman: “In cask this was all umami on the nose. Incredibly complex and compelling. The kind of nose so great you hate to move on to actually tasting the wine. Tapenade, green peppercorns, tarragon, Szechuan pepper, jus de viande. Like with the Crozes les Habrards, there is a lot of the color green. It actually reminded of a specific dish we make at the farm, the most umami dish we make, the one I have pregnant cravings for. It’s an Italian dish. Rabbit in a sauce that has anchovies, capers, and vinegar. Bottling has closed this up a little, and made it darker. It starts with griotte cherries, and the savory has moved from green to blue-black, to plums and vegemite. It is now closed on the palate too, but it is quiet rather than austere; it has the reserve of a truly great wine built for the ages. You definitely need to give this a two-hour decant to get it back to its life in cask. But it does go back there. Painfully slowly. La Force Tranquille. But when it finally cracks, the finish is superlative. Long, fresh, savory, complex. As the French say: PMG (pour ma gueule); or as the seagulls do: Mine!”

After winemaking in Australia, New Zealand and Burgundy — where he struck up an ongoing friendship with Ben Leroux at Comte Armand, Jean-Baptiste Souillard worked as an oenologue for Jean-Luc Colombo before starting his own micro-négoce in 2014. For JBS, freshness and digestibility are King. Mirroring the cellar, the winemaking is basic as. Natural ferments, with plenty of whole bunches, neutral oak (old barrique) and delicate extractions are the order of the day. Tasting through the 2016s —deliciously savoury, bunchy wines of complex fragrance and subtleness — it’s clear the Northern Rhône has an outstanding new talent in its midst (and he’s only getting started.

WINE SPECTATOR 94 POINTS - "This is suave, with a smoldering tobacco note running from start to finish, while truffle, cocoa, braised fig and warm black currant confiture notes fill in the remaining space. Dense, but very silky along the edges, with remarkable harmony for the vintage. Drink now through 2022. 2,500 cases made."