2010 Cote Rotie Les Grandes Places

Glass-staining purple. Sexy, oak-spiced aromas of dark berry liqueur, cola and vanilla, with hints of olive and smoky minerals emerging with air. Broad and deeply pitched, offering intense black and blue fruit flavors and a sexy note of candied violet. The vanilla quality comes back on a strikingly powerful and youthfully tannic finish with outstanding focus.

Easily the star of the lineup, the 2010 Côte Rôtie Les Grandes Places is like the 2009, only more fresh, pure, delineated and focused. Loaded with notes of crème de cassis and black raspberry fruit that’s intermixed with notions of spring flowers, licorice, chocolate-dusted meats and toasted bread, this beauty flows onto the palate with full-bodied richness, no hard edges and ultra-fine tannin. Drink this awesome Côte Rôtie anytime over the coming two decades.||Located in Condrieu, high up on a gorgeous west-facing slope overlooking the Rhone River, this superb estate is managed by the young and charismatic Stéphane Montez. Looking at his holdings in Côte Rôtie, he owns 2.6 hectares of vines in the lieux-dits of Le Combard, Bons- Arrêts and Les Bercheries (mostly granite soils and all located in the southern end of the appellation), as well as a tiny half-hectare of old vines in Les Grandes Places, which is all micro-schist soils and located in the northern part of the appellation. From this, he produces two Côte Rôties, with the cuvee Fortis coming all from his holdings in the southern part of the appellation, and then the single vineyard Les Grandes Places, which is the top cuvee. The Côte Rôtie Fortis is the most elegant and textured of the two and incorporates upwards of 10-12% Viognier. It’s aged two years in roughly two-thirds new and one-third used demi-muids. The Les Grandes Place is much more masculine, firm and structured, and incorporates roughly 3% Viognier. It sees anywhere from 30-42 months in 100% new demi-muids before being bottled. Both wines are completely destemmed, vinified in stainless steel and bottled unfined and unfiltered. In addition to superb Côte Rôties, this estate releases a number of high-quality Condrieu that all merit attention. eRobertParker.com.February, 2015