TN: 1999 Domaine du Grapillon D'Or Gigondas

[Loren Sonkin]

1999 Domaine du Grapillon DOr Gigondas
I bought a few of these on release and they were great. I also had one at the Inn of the Seventh Ray in LA around 5 years ago and it was not nearly as good as ours. That bottle had a slightly different label. Ours had the words Eleve en Vieux Foudres on the label. This was the last of mine. I was concerned it might be over the hill. Wrong. Purple in color with just the slightest bit of dark brown. The nose was dark cherries, black raspberries, the slightest funk, and spice. Full bodied. On the palate, this was complex and even better than the nose. Black raspberries, earth and the slightest bit of licorice. Nice finish. This still has some tannins to resolve but if you have these absolutely try one now. If you have a few, five years left easy.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

I drink this wine occasionally when I'm there. I've always liked it but never found it one of my top choices. Interesting to hear that it ages well. Maybe I should attend to it more. Gigondas is getting more and more spoofed and it's always nice to find good, old-line producers, assuming this still is one these days.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

So, out of curiosity, I checked their website. Assuming things haven't changed since 99 (a large assumption), this is their standard cuvee. Their upgrade cuvee, called Excellence, in addition to using older vines and some more syrah is aged in cement tanks rather than old oak foudres, according to the site to let the terroir and the varietals show through more clearly. Now this is a mode of updgrading the cuvee that I could sign on to.

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
So, out of curiosity, I checked their website. Assuming things haven't changed since 99 (a large assumption), this is their standard cuvee. Their upgrade cuvee, called Excellence, in addition to using older vines and some more syrah is aged in cement tanks rather than old oak foudres, according to the site to let the terroir and the varietals show through more clearly. Now this is a mode of updgrading the cuvee that I could sign on to.

Ain't that the truth, and a welcome sign in a region where upscale is essentially synonymous with spoofy (I'll defer to your opinions of Da Capo, never having had theh opportunity to try it myself)

Mark Lipton

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
So, out of curiosity, I checked their website. Assuming things haven't changed since 99 (a large assumption), this is their standard cuvee. Their upgrade cuvee, called Excellence, in addition to using older vines and some more syrah is aged in cement tanks rather than old oak foudres, according to the site to let the terroir and the varietals show through more clearly. Now this is a mode of updgrading the cuvee that I could sign on to.

Ain't that the truth, and a welcome sign in a region where upscale is essentially synonymous with spoofy (I'll defer to your opinions of Da Capo, never having had theh opportunity to try it myself)

Mark Lipton

Mostly, I'm of the opinion that there are too many special cuvees without regard to spoof. Charvin had one cuve of his 07 CdR that he considered bottling separately because it tasted significantly better and different (and was all grenache and so could have a raison d'etre as a single cuvee). Charvin doesn't use wood, doesn't destem, prides himself on letting his vineyards tell him what to do, so it wouldn't have been a spoofed cuvee. He decided not to do it, though, and when I asked him why, he said that the area already had more than enough special cuvees. I couldn't argue, though I would have liked that one. Still, he's right for reasons other than spoof.

I don't know the percentage of coincidence between special cuvee and spoof. High I would guess, but far less than absolute. I've had sips of the Da Capo in 00, 03 and 07 and I know how it's made. It's not spoofed. The problem is that I won't buy bottles of it because it's far too expensive and the regular wine would surely be better for its addition. I understand separating out a vineyard of young vines and selling the juice as a lower cuvee until it's old enough to come online. And I understand just making different versions of things as experiments and curiosities (there's a CdP I very much like, who is very traditional, who plays around with a syrah cuvee of CdR because he wants to play around; I'm not a big fan of it, but I can't fight with the desire to play around). But I'm not a big fan of separating out older vines to make a special cuvee that makes their main wine a second label.

This issue is very different from spoof, and really has nothing to do with this thread. As I said, if you are going to do special cuvees, I'd prefer they look like Grapillon d'Or's. But I'm not sure I still wouldn't prefer that they just go away.