Etienne Guigal, Cote Rotie La Turque 2006

vinous94

Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds

Bright ruby. Pungent dark berry and cherry-vanilla aromas are complemented by anise, pipe tobacco and black cardamom. Smoky cherry and blackcurrant flavors are deep and nicely focused, with building tannins and a seductively sweet quality. Shows more power than the La Mouline but less finesse. Finishes on a lively, bittersweet cherry note, with outstanding persistence and lingering elements of spice and smoke.

vinous95

Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds

Opaque ruby. Expressive, perfumed aromas of red berry and cherry preserves quickly retreated with brief aeration. Deeply concentrated dark fruit flavors slowly reveal notes of spices and candied flowers as well as chewy tannins and a late peppery quality. The finish packs a punch but is pretty undifferentiated right now. It will be interesting to see if the vivacity that this showed last year returns after bottling.

vinous97

Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds

Ruby-red. Sexy, perfumed bouquet of cherry-cola, cassis, smoked meat, violet and minerals; this could only be syrah. Pure and sweet, with incredibly deep red berry liqueur flavors and a strong note of licorice. Bright and focused on the endless finish, with lingering mineral notes adding more energy.

vinous0

Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds

Vivid ruby. Youthfully taut red berry scents are unforthcoming. Energetic red fruits offer good cut but are shut down on the finish, not letting much out. Impossible to assess with confidence today.

robert_parker94

Reviewed by: Jeb Dunnuck

Possessing more acidity and obvious structure than the 2007, the 2006 Cote Rotie La Turque offers ample notes of charred meats, blackcurrants, cassis, saddle leather and spice. Still inky purple in color, with a straight, focused, lengthy style, give this full-bodied beauty another 2-3 years of cellaring and enjoy over the following two decades or more.

robert_parker98

Reviewed by: Robert M. Parker, Jr.

The 2006 Cote Rotie La Turque displays more supple tannin, but not the density or blockbuster richness of the 2005. Offering extraordinary charm and finesse, it is beautifully fruited, with no hard edges. Blue and black fruits intermixed with espresso roast, olives, and bacon emerge from this sexy, seductive wine. It will be drinkable young, or can be cellared for 20-25 years. As always, a tasting at Guigal is an opportunity to receive several years’ worth of wine education in one day (that’s how long it takes to go through all the bottles and barrels). Marcel Guigal is obviously a brilliant businessman, but most importantly, he understands vineyards, how to get maximum quality from them, and how to make wines, at all different price levels. From his Cotes du Rhones to Cote Roties, these wines are as good as one is likely to find. When I first visited Guigal nearly thirty years ago, this was a relatively small firm. Today, his may be the most successful wine operation in France. Guigal attributes his success to hard work and never being satisfied with the status quo. He pays the highest prices of any negociant for the fruit used to fashion his Cotes du Rhone as well as other negociant wines. He has also been extraordinarily adept at buying fabulous terroirs, as evidenced by his purchase of the De Vallouit properties in Crozes-Hermitage and Hermitage as well as Grippat’s top-notch vineyard holdings in St.-Joseph. Along with the late Thomas Jefferson, Guigal has always believed that white Hermitage is France’s greatest white wine. With his recent acquisitions of superb vineyard sites, he is hell-bent on proving to the world that Jefferson was correct – that white Hermitage is an amazing as well as long-lived wine. In top vintages, two cuvees are produced, the regular offering (usually a blend of primarily Marsanne with a touch of Roussanne) and the luxury cuvee called Ex-Voto, which is generally 95% Marsanne and 5% Roussanne from two stunning vineyards. Eighty percent comes from Les Murets (regarded as one of the appellation’s finest white wine vineyards) and 20% from l’Ermite.Tasting through Guigal’s new and up-coming releases confirms his legendary consistency. He is the quintessential multitasker, fashioning inexpensive fine wines as well as super-luxurious, utterly profound reds and whites. When Guigal purchased the Grippat holdings, he received six acres of the Vignes de l’Hospice, a stunningly steep, photogenic vineyard at the top of the northern sector of St.-Joseph, looking down on the town of Tournon. These are the same decomposed granitic soils found across the river in Hermitage’s Les Bessards vineyard. Everything Guigal has produced from this vineyard has been as profound as St.-Joseph can be. In fact, his only competitor is Michel Chapoutier’s 500 or so cases of St.-Joseph Les Granits. Marcel’s talented son, Philippe, is taking over more and more of the business, and appears more than capable of filling the extraordinary shoes of his father, who I doubt will ever retire. I reviewed Guigal’s Cotes du Rhones and Chateauneuf du Papes in issue #173 (October, 2007), but he also continues to be an active buyer of high quality juice from Gigondas. He accomplishes this by tasting hundreds of samples, visiting 50-60 caves, and paying the highest price for his purchases. Guigal is unquestionably the most important producer of Cote Rotie. He buys grapes from nearly four dozen small growers, and supplements that from his own holdings. The single vineyard cuvees are excluded from this blend, but all his Cote Roties are vinified in his cellars. Guigal produces around 2,000 cases of Cote Rotie Chateau d’Ampuis, a cuvee he first made in 1995. About 7% Viognier is included in the blend, and the sources for the fruit are all fabulous sites from both the Cote Blonde and Cote Brune. According to Guigal, research in France’s National Archives prove that in its past, Chateau d’Ampuis produced Cote Rotie from these same sites (Not yet released) Importer: Fred Ek and Patrick Will, Ex Cellars Wine Agencies, Solvang, CA; tel. (805) 686-9153

robert_parker94

Reviewed by: Robert M. Parker, Jr.

The 2006 Cote Rotie La Turque’s dark purple/plum hue is similar to La Mouline’s, but with slightly more opaqueness. A denser, but seemingly less complex style of wine, it offers notes of animal fat, creme de cassis, charcoal and new saddle leather in its full-bodied, ripe, rich personality. This 2006 will benefit from 2-4 more years of bottle age and drink well for 25-30 years thereafter. As I have written many times before, no one in the wine world is better at “raising” a wine (or as the French call it elevage) than Marcel Guigal, who learned the skills from his father, Etienne. Because everyone tends to focus on vintage conditions and terroir, the importance of a wine’s elevage is often overlooked, but Guigal’s unusually long tank, foudre and small barrel aging regime for all his red wines as well as several of his whites results in an array of remarkable wines time and time again. Even the most challenging vintages, which often taste under-nourished, vegetal and thin in their first year or two of life, tend to take on concentration and character, turning out to be some of the finest wines in many of the most difficult Rhone vintages. Moreover, Guigal’s wines always taste better out of bottle than from barrel, which speaks to his honesty and integrity as well as to his brilliance in deciding how long to age a wine in wood or tank as well as choosing the perfect moment to bottle it. None of this is as simple as it might sound, and that’s why Marcel Guigal gets my vote as the reigning genius in terms the upbringing his wines. For ten to twelve years after my first visit to this estate in the late 1970s, I tended to think of Guigal as primarily a red wine specialist. I still believe the red wines are the heart and soul of Maison Guigal, but the quality of the white wines has gone from strength to strength over the last few decades, and the Guigal family now routinely produces some of the finest dry whites of the entire Rhone Valley, including their humble Cotes du Rhone, and more particularly their white cuvees of Crozes-Hermitage, St.-Joseph, Hermitage and Condrieu. They produce more of the latter wine than any other proprietor of this tiny appellation. Guigal’s 2008 whites have turned out surprisingly strong. Guigal’s luxury cuvee of Condrieu, La Doriane, comes from the estate’s tiny holdings in some of the appellation’s finest terroirs, such as the Cote Chatillon, Volants, Colombier, and the Coteau Chery. Aged in 100% new oak (although it never shows any oakiness) and put through 100% malolactic fermentation, lees stirring is employed for La Doriane until the malolactic is finished. It is usually bottled after 12-14 months. Guigal’s red wines possess some of the lowest sulphur dioxide levels of any finished wines I have ever tasted. Most of them are approximately 10 ppm (parts per million) total SO2, which is virtually nothing. That said, the wines always age incredibly well, which goes back to Guigal’s brilliant, patient, long-term barrel, tank and foudre aging. The current value picks in Guigal’s red wine portfolio are his Crozes-Hermitage (one offering made) and his three St.-Joseph cuvees. Tasting through Guigal’s single vineyard Cote Roties, La Landonne, La Mouline and La Turque, is equal to tasting through a museum dedicated to the world’s most compelling wines. Each is treated differently, although there are similarities. La Mouline always comes from the Cote Blonde, La Turque and La Landonne from the Cote Brune; La Mouline is co-fermented with 11% Viognier, La Turque with 5-6% Viognier and La Landonne is 100% Syrah. La Mouline, made from the oldest vines (over 60 years), is vinified by pump-overs; La Turque is vinified by punching down the cap; and La Landonne is vinified in a modern system of cap immersion. All of these techniques tend to produce different tannin levels as well as types of tannin. Despite the fact that these wines spend 42 months in 100% new French oak, the wood component disappears in the character of the wines at about age 6-10. Moreover, these cuvees are rarely racked and are not sulphured until prior to bottling. The total parts per million of SO2 in the three cuvees runs between 8 and 15 parts per million, which is essentially nothing. In even the worst Northern Rhone vintages, Guigal somehow manages to produce amazing wines from these vineyards. The first vintage for La Mouline was 1966, La Landonne 1978, and La Turque 1985. Of course, these wines are bottled with neither fining nor filtration. 1991 was a great year for Guigal’s single vineyard Cote Roties, and 2007 is the first vintage since that reminds me so much of that vintage. 2008 was a challenging vintage for the single vineyard Cote Roties. Yet fine wines have been produced in this difficult year – a testament to the skills of Marcel Guigal and his son, Philippe. Importer: Vintus Wines, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (914) 769-3000

robert_parker97

Reviewed by: Robert M. Parker, Jr.

The exquisite 2006 Cote Rotie La Turque may or may not be as good. It exhibits exceptional aromas of bacon fat, smoked duck, soy, black currants, blackberries, and graphite. Full-bodied and dense with good acidity, outrageous concentration, and a finish that lasts over 60 seconds, this is amazing stuff! (Not yet released) While the entire world of wine knows how profound Guigal’s red wines are, they may not know that he continues to demonstrate a complete mastery of white wine varietals, from his lowly Cotes du Rhone blend of Roussanne, Marsanne, Viognier, Clairette, and Bourboulenc, to his seriously-endowed dry whites from the northern Rhone. Over recent years, Guigal has been attempting to produce an interesting, fairly-priced, delicious Crozes-Hermitage. (The overall level of quality from this complex appellation is less than exciting.) Guigal is becoming one of the most important producers of high quality St.-Joseph. He fashions three cuvees, a general appellation offering, his St.-Joseph Lieu-Dit St.-Joseph, and the limited production Vignes de l’Hospice, which comes from high elevation, steeply terraced vines planted at the top of the small mountain that dominates the town of Tournon. Along with Chapoutier’s St.-Joseph Les Granits, Guigal’s Vignes de l’Hospice is one of the most profound wines of the appellation. It comes from a 5.5 acre parcel at the top of the small mountain that dominates the town of Tournon. The soils are decomposed granite with essentially the same soil base as the great vineyard of Hermitage across the river known as Les Bessards. One can argue that by producing the Cote Rotie Chateau d’Ampuis, Guigal is pulling some high quality material away from his Brune et Blonde, and it seems to me that only in the greatest vintages is the Brune et Blonde as consistent as it was in the past. That said, the Chateau d’Ampuis is superb. This cuvee comes from some of the top vineyards planted on the steep hillsides of Cote Rotie, such as Le Clos, La Grande Plantee, La Pommiere, Pavillon Rouge, Le Moulin, and Guigal’s most recent purchase, La Viria, which I suspect will become another single vineyard Cote Rotie in a few years. There are around 2,000 cases of this cuvee, and it is aged 30 or more months in 100% new oak. Guigal’s single vineyard Cote Roties are other-worldly in nearly every vintage. I have given these offerings more perfect scores than any other wines in the world. They represent three completely different expressions of Cote Rotie, and are made in limited quantities. There are about 1,000 cases of La Landonne, and 500-600 cases each of La Mouline and La Turque. La Mouline, which includes the highest percentage of co-fermented Viognier (11%), is always the more delicate, voluptuous wine with the most complex aromatics. La Turque is a denser, more gamy, meaty effort with approximately 7% Viognier co-fermented. It comes across as a completely different style of wine. La Landonne, which is grown in pure schist on the steep hillsides of the northern-most sector of the appellation, is 100% Syrah. It is the densest, most concentrated, masculine, and tannic of these three cuvees. Regardless of the vintage’s style and personality, La Mouline will always be the most flattering to drink young, followed by La Turque, and lastly by La Landonne. All three of these offerings are aged for a remarkably long, 42 month period in 100% new oak barrels (but they are never oaky), and are bottled unfined and unfiltered. They typically have 30+ years of longevity in top vintages. In short, they are singular expressions of greatness from spectacular vineyards that are brought to fruition with non-interventionalistic, creative yet distinctive winemaking. A re-visit to the 2004s has proven that Guigal’s long barrel aging can produce wines that are often better out of bottle than they were early in cask, a common occurrence at Guigal. Importer: Fred Ek and Patrick Will, Ex Cellars Wine Agencies, Solvang, CA; tel. (805) 686-9153