Wine Advisor
Clusel Roch, Cote Rotie Les Grandes Places 2019
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Joe Czerwinski
The intense, tannic 2019 Cote Rotie les Grandes Places—from vines planted in 1935, 1960 and 1984—needs lots of time to come into a more pleasurable state of drinkability. It's full-bodied, concentrated, dense and tannic, but it shows promising notes of grilled plums and salted licorice on a long, long finish. It's a terrific effort, but one that will require serious patience.
Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds
Glass-staining ruby. A highly perfumed bouquet evokes ripe dark fruits, baking spices, smoked meat and potpourri, accompanied by building olive and licorice notes. Sappy, sharply delineated blackberry, bitter cherry, licorice and espresso flavors turn sweeter with air and pick up a smoky mineral quality that adds support and back-end cut. Chewy and spicy on the impressively persistent finish, which shows excellent detail and gripping tannins. One-third whole clusters.
Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds
Smoke- and mineral-accented aromas of fresh dark berries, cherry cola and vanilla, along with a hint of olive in the background. Supple, broad and alluringly sweet, offering deeply concentrated black raspberry, cherry preserve, spicecake and violet pastille flavors and a report of smoky minerality on the back half. Shows superb energy and fine detail and reveals no rough edges. Finishes velvety, energetic and extremely long, displaying excellent focus, youthfully chewy tannins and lingering florality.
About the Producer
Guillaume Clusel is the man behind a uniquely elegant style of Côte-Rôtie. In an area of the Rhône valley associated with powerful red wines, his Syrah is graceful and refined. The secret is his attention to detail. Guillaume picks early and by hand and uses around 30% whole bunch fruit in many of his cuvées. He has farmed his 20 hectares of vineyards organically since 2002, and alongside his coveted Côte-Rôtie vineyards, also grows Viognier on the terraced slopes of the hills of Condrieu, plus Chardonnay and Gamay in the warm, pebbled soils of the Côteaux du Lyonnais. Guillaume took over the domaine from his parents, Gilbert Clusel and Brigitte Roch, who put the estate on the map during the 90s when they invested significantly in the vineyards and the cellar. His signature wine, Les Schistes, is a classic Côte-Rôtie blend with a dash of Viognier bringing a floral lift to the Syrah and named after the south-east facing soils of his Northern Rhône vineyards.
