We’ll try an keep it simple. We could launch a rather extensive rant on our long history with Domaine Saint Cosme. We have been selling it for going on three decades and have watched passionate owner Louis Barruol go through ups and downs, style changes, and the expansion of his program to other projects. He is one of the dependable labels we always look forward to checking up on, and have made some sensational finds over the years among his value offerings in particular.
Our purpose here is twofold. First, we want to talk about his beautifully textured, pure, ample, imminently tasty Saint Cosme Cotes du Rhone 2019. Now his Cotes du Rhone, as we have mentioned the many other times we have featured it, is a little bit of a different bird. Unlike the majority of wines that bear this appellation, which are mostly Grenache, Louis’ Cotes du Rhone is all or nearly all old vine Syrah (Barruol states the average age of the vines on the property are 60 years old).
The 2019 is gorgeous and already an attractive drink. Lots of layered, plush fruit, spice and pepper, and, as Louis himself describes, “Blackberry, smoked bacon, charcoal, blueberry, rose.” We expected a lot given what we had heard about 2019, but the wine exceeded our expectations.
Besides the example this wine itself sets for expectations of 2019 from the southern Rhone, there are the outgoing Barruol’s own words. Of the vintage, within the context of his notes on the 2019 Cotes du Rhone, he said, “Be warned – this is a stellar vintage, the greatest since the extraordinary 2010. Of course, 2016 is great too, and even 2015, which in Saint Cosme was memorable. But there is a freshness, an intensity, an evanescence, something undefinable that is charming and vibrant in the 2019s.
“…The 2019 Côtes du Rhône Saint Cosme is the best since 2010. A wine with a substantial structure, it is also brimming with fruit and shows great concentra-tion, counterbalanced by the finest freshness. In a dry vintage, concentration affects all the component parts of the fruit: not just the sugars, but the acids, water (which does not concentrate but disappears…), tannins, color, aromas… etc… This natural phenomenon produces something we all love: intensity.
“Character and identity are subsequently multiplied tenfold. The fact that nature should be able to offer us these gifts is an absolute joy. These wines are suitable for either drinking or keeping. They will bring us joy and surprises. They will become advocates for what I would call ‘the red wine cause’. We live in an era of white wines, rosés and sometimes even unripe grapes – which is an aberration… 2019 is a gentle reminder from nature and a timely opportunity to set the record straight.”
This Cotes du Rhone, at $14.98, is a delicious wine and an exciting value. And in the bigger picture, it looks like there are more good times down the road in the southern Rhone in 2019. While we didn’t find any scores on this wine, but it’s early in the game for the 2019s. The gigantic barrel scores on their single-vineyard Gigondas bottlings affirms that 2019 should be on people’s radar.