|
|
Member Reviews:
 Justifying the Hype
Tasted this at a store event -- the fact that a wine from Cotes du Castillion has this much concentration, richness, and potential for future development really is nothing short of remarkable. It's a classic right-banker, and heck of a testament to the vintage as a whole. Five stars indeed.
-- Dawn from Pelham, NY
Lots of power, but not over-the-top or alcoholic. Plenty of black fruit, and (I think) it will be even better in a year or two. Tastes to me a lot like the better Saint-Emilions I used to buy.
-- Jim from Erie, PA
 Delicious
This a rich delicious wine, It has a very dark core that almost seems syrah like. The flavors are still quite primary and not easily dissected into different components. I like it now and I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it more not that far in the future.
-- Mark from Litchfield, ME
|
|
Shot Berries on Right Bank
Many of you have emailed in to ask how we come up with these stories every day, how we conjure up a sense of taste, smell and place -- without popping a cork. The truth is, it's often tough. Sometimes we're just spent, feeling like we've run out of adjectives, deleting five times as many story lines as we eventually publish.
But every so often, we get to deal from a stacked deck, one in which every card bears the critical fingerprints of guys like Robert Parker or Stephen Tanzer. In these rare cases, those guys set us up with Steve Nash alley-oops. Slam dunks like this one almost feel like a day off.
It had been exactly twenty years since Bordeaux saw back-to-back vintages that offered both the massive, forward concentration and fine structure of 2009 and 2010. The world, of course, was a different place back then. We can still remember buying First Growths on the futures market in 1991. We picked up two cases of 1989 Lafite Rothschild at the release price, then flipped one of them eighteen months later -- doubling our money, thus getting twelve bottles for free!
But, our salaries haven't exactly kept up with inflation on the Gironde. When Robert Parker finally weighed in on the 2009s, handing out a whopping eighteen 100-point scores, it seemed like the only guys prepared to pay the 4-digit First Growth futures prices lived in places called Shanghai and Beijing.
Just a year after Parker's greatest 100pt bonanza, a new vintage was ready to hit the market. In one of the more surprising reports in Wine Advocate history, RP came out blasting, alerting readers to what many believe to be an even more voluptuous and magnificently structured second act -- again sending prices into orbit.
So far, Parker has awarded a dozen 2010 Bordeaux "hyphenated" 100pt scores (97-100, 98-100, etc.), with follow-up tastings and ratings still to come. On our scorecard, we see the 2010s as a logical marriage of 2009 New World generosity and sensational 2005 structure. Some are calling it the finest vintage of their lifetimes, and particularly in the satellite appellations, winegrowers on the fine, well drained soils of the Right Bank, are dumbfounded by the almost bizarre intensity of their 2010s. Here's why.
In Bordeaux, it's often said that June defines the size of the crop. August defines structure. But it's the last weeks of the growing season -- in September, or in this case, way into October -- in which the true quality of a vintage is determined. Never have these adages played out more accurately than for the finest estates of the Cotes de Castillon in 2010.
At Chateau Roque Le Mayne, flowering was problematic, shrinking yields by more than twenty-five percent before things even got started. But that spring "misfortune" would pay enormous dividends come October. The problematic set made for clusters filled with berries of uneven size. In the Cote de Castillon, they called these clusters "the chicken and the hens." The long, stretched out, October Indian summer, allowed the initially well-formed berries to reach perfect form. But scattered amidst those grapes, berries that had struggled at flowering would never produce seeds. These 'shot berries' -- prized millerandage -- would ultimately provide for startlingly extravagant purple fruit density unlike anything they'd seen at Roque Le Mayne in decades.
For those of you who managed to get your hands on a few bottles of the glorious 2009 Chateau Roque Le Mayne, stuffing the ballot box with five star ratings, you know all about the superb refinement of this top shelf Chateau. But, if you thought that 2009 was among the top bargains of Parker's 100pt vintage bonanza, hold on to your hat. This 2010 makes its predecessor seem almost insubstantial.
Opaque purple in color -- unusually so for an appellation where refinement usually trumps power -- the nose is explosive, filled with ripe cassis, sweet herbs, and dark plum. The attack is surprisingly massive, showing off superb briary, chewy crème-de-cassis concentration, all buttressed by marvelous, Right Bank backbone.
|
|
Tasting Notes
2010 Château Roque Le Mayne Cotes de Castillon
"Opaque purple in color -- unusually so for an appellation where refinement usually trumps power -- the nose is explosive, filled with ripe cassis, sweet herbs, and dark plum. The attack is surprisingly massive, showing off superb briary, chewy crème-de-cassis concentration, all buttressed by marvelous, Right Bank backbone. Delicious out of the gate, all that purple/black fruit opulence stealing center stage. But don't be afraid to lay this one down for a quiet slumber. Drink now-2017."
-- WineAccess Travel Log
|
|
*Important Shipping Information
- This is a Pre-Arrival Offer: Weather permitting, wine will begin shipping upon arrival, in September, 2012.
|
|
Cart