Everyone pretty much accepts that axiom that wine is subjective. Not everybody has the same palate memory, tasting experience, or even the same physical ability to taste wine (or anything for that matter). Even among ‘experts’ there are a widely varied opinions as to what defines a ‘great’ wine. We could write pages (and have) on all of the things that determine and effect how a wine is perceived beyond the wine itself. But our purpose today is merely to define our terms for this specific case.
The definition of ‘great’ depends on the format. The winner of a mass tasting is often the wine that overpowers, or might be the most expressive on that day. Does that mean its great? To some people maybe so. But our enthusiasm for this pair from Faury, the Cote Rotie 2015 and Condrieu 2015, stems from their achievement of an ideal. We’ll explain.
Yeah, we have been fans of Faury, an estate in the Northern Rhone, for a long time. The wines have always been round, engaging, and well priced. Philippe Faury founded the estate in 1979 and his son joined him in 2006, and it seems like they have been doing their best work of late. The 2015s, not surprisingly, have been uniformly exciting from top to bottom. But the pair we mentioned earlier kind of took us aback.
They are not the ‘biggest’, most aggressive wines we have had, nor would we guarantee they would win some knock down tasting event. But without trying to sound presumptuous, the appeal with this particular pair was the proximity to what some might call ‘perfection’. We are defining that as the wines performing beautifully to the ‘benchmark’ of their particular genre. Simply put, they are sensational examples that you would describe exactly as how they might be described in a textbook.
We have gone into detail about how difficult it is to get Viognier right. It is a capricious grape that can go from lean and undernourished to dumpy and flabby in short order. If you were to describe the perfect Condrieu, it would be a wine with richness in midpalate, but not too much, supported by enough acidity for lift, but not too much, with just the right amount of tension between all of the components to sit perfectly centered on the palate. The flavors would range from pear to peach to apple, with a slightly honeyed note and layers of spice tones.
With the Faury Condrieu 2015, you get exactly that. Round enough to deliver and luxurious mouth feel and yet it sits high on the palate, perfectly proportioned, delicious but not overbearing Condrieu from vines planted between 1976 and 2007 in granite soils, this is exactly what it should be.
Perfect Cote Rotie? Great Cote Rotie has a lovely core of blackberry fruit with streaks of mineral, smoke and bacon, ripe tannins, refined acidity, but also the best examples sport an almost Burgundian elegance. Here we have a winner, lovely fruit, nicely proportioned with everything in harmony, plenty of style but not heavy or ponderous. From schist and clay soils, the vines on this 1.7 hectare parcel were planted between 1976 and 2007, this one excels by virtue of its stylish execution of typicite.
If you are looking to be bowled over with overt power, that’s not what these are about. Nor should they be. Here we are talking about a couple of truly delightful wines that excel because they are refined, well executed, captivating examples of exactly what they are supposed to be. Brilliance without excess, it doesn’t hurt that they are attractively priced for their categories to boot.