2017 Benom Wines Les Deux Frères
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Deep red. Highly perfumed aromas of raspberry and cherry liqueur, baking spices and pungent flowers; a minerally note emerges as the wine opens up. Juicy, penetrating and alluringly sweet, offering juicy red fruit and floral pastille flavors and a spicy jolt of white pepper. Finishes on a gently tannic note, with strong, red-fruit-dominated persistence and repeating florality. Fermented in concrete tanks and aged in French oak puncheons, 10% of them new.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Josh Raynolds
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The 2017 Les Deux Frères is a blend of 56% Grenache, 22% Cabernet Sauvignon and 22% Tempranillo aged 18 months in just 10% new French oak. It has a medium ruby color and bombastic scents of ruby red grapefruit and tangerine oil with crushed black cherries, strawberry and raspberry preserves, dried flowers, autumn leaves and an amaro streak plus pleasantly rustic notions of dried herbs in the background. Medium-bodied, it's very silky and explodes with earth and bitters-tinged fruits, finishing long and lifted.
An interesting blend of 56% Grenache, 22% Tempranillo, and 22% Cabernet Sauvignon, the medium ruby-hued 2017 Les Deux Frères spent 18 months in 10% new larger French oak barrels. A beautiful bouquet of ripe cherries, mulled strawberries, dried flowers, and spice all flow to a medium to full-bodied Grenache blend that has soft tannins, remarkable purity of fruit, no hard edges, and a great finish. Drink this elegant yet powerful red over the coming decade. Brothers Arnaud and Guillaume Fabre continue to release terrific wines under their Benom Label, and as I wrote last year, these are rich, powerful wines that stay balanced and pure, and they’re well worth seeking out.