Wine Advisor
Delas, Cote Rotie La Landonne 2017
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Joe Czerwinski
Bottled just two weeks prior to my visit, the 2017 Cote Rotie La Landonne shows more raspberry and blueberry fruit than most La Landonnes, adding those delectable nuances to more typical mocha and roasted meat notes. Medium to full-bodied, it's lush, creamy and long, with up to two decades of aging potential. It's complete and elegant without being showy, just lovely stuff. Tasted twice (once blind), with consistent notes.
Reviewed by: Joe Czerwinski
Always a top performer, the 2017 Cote Rotie La Landonne features notes of charred meat and espresso on the nose, velvety-textured dark fruit flavors on the palate and a long, clove and allspice-tinged finish. It's medium to full-bodied, fleshed out by concentrated black olive notes. It should be entering maturity around 2025 and drink well through 2040.
Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds
Opaque magenta. An exotically perfumed bouquet evokes minerals, black and blue fruits, pungent flowers, spicecake and black pepper. Juicy and precise on the palate, offering intense blueberry, cassis and candied violet flavors supported by a core of juicy acidity. Deftly blends power and finesse and finishes extremely long and minerally, with harmonious tannins adding framework and youthful grip.
Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds
Deep, bright-rimmed ruby. Expansive black/blue fruit, licorice, violet, espresso and exotic spice scents pick up a smoky mineral quality as the wine opens up. Offers bitter cherry and black raspberry flavors that are lifted by a core of juicy acidity. A Moroccan spice note appears on the back half. The strikingly long, sweet finish displays youthful tannic grip and lingering suggestions of licorice and candied flowers.
Reviewed by: James Suckling
Dark stones, graphite, sarsaparilla and black pepper, as well as a swathe of attractive spices and red plums. Black cherries, too. The palate has a very sleek and muscular feel with a smoothly delivered build of tannin and a spicy, elegant edge. 100% syrah. Try from 2025.
About the Producer
The famous Drass Frère wine company was founded in 1835. Since 1996, the spirit and soul that contributed to the reputation of quality wines has been restored. At present, the Dras brothers have a total of 30 hectares of vineyards, 10 of which are in the Emmettage-Hermitage appellation, 2 in Saint-Joseph and the remaining 18 in Croze-Hermitage. The steep granite hillsides provide favourable growing conditions for the vineyards of the Hermitage appellation, which produces the best quality wines. The grapes are hand-harvested and the fruit is intact and not prone to premature crushing, and in 1996 the estate was renovated by replacing all the old stainless steel fermentation vats with 85 litre concrete vats, and the 2,500 litre old oak barrels were replaced by 600 Burgundy oak barrels. The renovation of the equipment has allowed the winery to separate the fermentation of different batches of grapes, set the fermentation temperature according to the needs of the different varieties, and to monitor them in a targeted manner. The winery uses the gravity artesian method in the vinification process, where the fruit is crushed and poured by gravity into the fermentation vats. After fermentation and pressing, the wine is decanted into oak barrels where malolactic fermentation takes place. The main grape variety is Syrah, but the estate also produces some white wines, mainly made from Marsanne and Viognier. The wines of the Delas Brothers include Domaine des Tourettes, Les Bessards, Seigneur de Maugiron and Francois de Tournon. Francois de Tournon, among others.
