| Score: |
96 JG.
"The 1991 Côte Blonde from René Rostaing has long been considered one of his finest wines and at age twenty-three, the wine is at its apogee of peak drinkability and simply stunning. The beautiful bouquet is still fairly youthful and will develop even more complexity with further bottle age, as it delivers a glorious blend of sweet dark berries, intense peppery notes, black olives, new leather, roasted gamebird, forest floor, nutskins and violets. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex and quite peppery in personality, with a glorious signature of soil, a rock solid core of fruit, great focus and balance, modest tannins and a very, very long, pure and refined finish. This wine has such beautifully pure fruit tones that it is still a touch fruit-driven in personality at age twenty-three, and for those that love this cuvée’s glorious terroir, I would be inclined to continue to hold this wine in the cellar and allow the soil tones to more fully take center stage. That said, it is drinking marvelously well today and keeping one’s hands off of this wine is no easy matter!" View From the Cellar, Sep/Oct 2014, Issue #53 |