To all Best Winers,
Usually, the northern Rhone is not synonymous with value.
All of those hi-falutin’ Cote Rotie, Hermitage and St. Joseph wines will set you back a pretty penny, especially the good ones.
Generally, those patches of real estate are simply too expensive for a small vigneron to de-classify. These guys need to make the wine from that specific parcel to survive. For example, if you’ve got 15 year-old Syrah vines growing in one of the finest vineyards in Cote Rotie, of course you’re going to make a $100 bottle of Cote Rotie from them, right?
Well, except for Martin Clerc. He’s crazy.
Today’s humbly appellated Vin de Pays Syrah we are offering is in fact 90% Cote Rotie from one of the finest vineyards in the appellation.
Ever hear of the Cote Brune? You’ve seen it on a lot of labels.
Jamet’s Cote Rotie Cote Brune is their rarest wine. It sells for $250+
Guigal’s La Turque is 100% Cote Brune. It sells for $700+
Other Cote Brune wines from the likes of Tardieu Laurent, Bernard Levet and Vincent Gasse have all scored in the mid-90’s and retailed for north of $100 per bottle be they from the top of the slope or the bottom.
Clerc’s ‘Syrah’ (heh, I snicker at the simple name…) from the foot of the Cote Brune retails for $18.
Not $188. Not $118. It costs $18. Period. Granted, it's not La Turque (what is?) but at 1/30th the price I'll take that flyer...
Now, I know I wrote that ‘only’ 90% of this wine comes from that fabled patch of land. Ho-hum, the other 10% comes from a single parcel of 60 year-old Syrah on the valley floor near the river.
Is this the greatest Syrah deal, like, ever? I’ve tasted (consumed fervently) this wine…twice…so far. It is sensational. Not in its bigness, but in its bold display of true Cote Rotie typicité, the tell-tale notes of smoke, blueberry, bacon fat and pepper are all to be found. It is polished, soulful, full of character, but not ‘big’. Refined, brimming with flavor.
In that case, I’d have to say yes, this is one of the greatest Syrah values I’ve ever tasted. We bought all we could find even before we found out it its nearly all Cote Rotie. We already knew the wine was special, finding out the wine was almost all Cote Brune was simply the icing on this spicy, peppery, bacon-y cake.
Only one problem. Michel makes less than 300 cases each vintage. This is not a tonnage wine. It is in fact a true vigneron’s insane form of quality control. We secured a measly ten cases, but just had to tell this story.
And, of course, of you think his wine rocks, you should probably grab a few bottles of Michel’s Cote Rotie, grown from more mature vines in the very fine sub-zones of Bassenon and Tupin-Semons. Granted, a few bottles is all we have (I think 18 bottles or so to be precise).
Imagine how that wine tastes seen as the stuff from 15 year-old vines in one of the greatest Syrah vineyards in the world wasn’t good enough to get into the mix? Whoa, goosebumps…
At $59.98 it is most assuredly an excellent value in its own right.
It’s go time. And remember, we can hold your purchases at no charge in our temp-controlled warehouse all summer, provided you can wait that long!
Kyle Meyer and Tristen Beamon, Proprietors, BestWinesOnline.com
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