2005 Rouge Gorge

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Putnam Weekley

putnam
2005 Rouge Gorge, Domaine de Belliviere
Aging very, very slowly. It has all the tannins, fruit and that strange hint of peanut shell taste as when it was released. I remember advising customers to put this away, a pure bluff that seems to have worked out. I wonder how many more decades it has

At a dinner with friends paired with venison backstrap cooked rare.
 
A bottle of the 2000 drunk in early fall was in a really strange place. Sad to say most of it went down the sink. Glad you did better with the '05.
 
I think 2005 was one of those boozy, tannic vintages that freeze a wine like this in natural preservatives. I was worried it might fall apart, in a top heavy way, but the standard organoleptic analytics seemed to urge risking other people's money on the chance that it could succeed as a cellar item.

I remember the 2004 Rouge Gorge more joyously.

Your insight below please
 
I only have experience with the 2000 cuvee bottling, Hommage a Louis Derre. In 2003 it was aromatic and earthy and weird. In 2008 and then again in 2011 it was wonderful (...sorta like CRB is all the time but with a little more stuffing).

A reliable lurker suggests that the 2005 Derre, of which I have a couple, is over-extracted and might never really come around. One might assume the same applies to the R.G.
 
I only had the 2004 Rouge Gorge in relative youth (last in 2009), but I remember it being a little rotty. It had a metallic quality, a kind of crack pipe vibe.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
2005 Derre, of which I have a couple, is over-extracted and might never really come around
Click to expand...

The 2009 Derré was in that vein, as far as ripe times go.

Yet I still love these wacky wines.
 
I guess I liked the 04 better than the 05 dry Pineau d'Aunis wines from Eric Nicolas, most especially in the form of Hommage a Louis Derre, but also including the sweet pink wine (jiro dreams of flees) vague hallucinated memories of other vintages are unreliable. Where do these wines conduit now, LDM still?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
2005 Derre, of which I have a couple, is over-extracted and might never really come around
Click to expand...

The 2009 Derré was in that vein, as far as ripe times go.

Yet I still love these wacky wines.
Click to expand...

agreed, and registered
 
originally posted by Putnam Weekley:
I guess I liked the 04 better than the 05 dry Pineau d'Aunis wines from Eric Nicolas
Click to expand...

I hear you; they get quite big and staid and/or monolithic, maybe?

That said, I thought the '04s were all kooky. Vieilles Vignes Eparses was also a bit of a rot baby.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Putnam Weekley:
I guess I liked the 04 better than the 05 dry Pineau d'Aunis wines from Eric Nicolas
Click to expand...

I hear you; they get quite big and staid and/or monolithic, maybe?

That said, I thought the '04s were all kooky. Vieilles Vignes Eparses was also a bit of a rot baby.
Click to expand...

04 whites,
correctly incorrect.
I remember sweat and vast weight
i loved them too
like crabapple infused savennieres

It was a red vintage
for me,
maybe
they were my introduction to Belliviere fwiwiw
 
The 2004 Rouge Gorge was my first experience with pineau d'aunis, and it was an utterly puzzling one. It took me a few years to really love the variety. Now it's among my favorites; I dread the day there is no more l'Arpent Rouge.

Anyway, your note is appreciated as I still have one of these 2005s left. 2020, perhaps?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
That said, I thought the '04s were all kooky. Vieilles Vignes Eparses was also a bit of a rot baby.
Click to expand...
It really came around though, my last bottle a year or so ago was fabulous. Honeyed but bone-dry and loaded with salty minerality.
 
I found a few more notes on the wine:
- I had the '02 Derre in '11 and it was hearty, beefy, peppery
- I had the '02 RG in '13 and it was weighty, savory, amazing
- I had the '05 RG in '13 and it was astringent and weird
- I had the '10 RG in '12 and it was all strawberries and iodine and yummy
- I had the '10 RG in '13 and it was stern, tight
- I had the '12 RG in '14 and it was black-fruited, minerally, dry, and stank of sulfur.

Not what you'd call a consistent product.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

Not what you'd call a consistent product.
Click to expand...

Indeed, though otoh, industrials are consistent, and perhaps those that reflect the vintage will appear somewhat inconsistent.
 
originally posted by slaton:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
That said, I thought the '04s were all kooky. Vieilles Vignes Eparses was also a bit of a rot baby.
Click to expand...
It really came around though, my last bottle a year or so ago was fabulous. Honeyed but bone-dry and loaded with salty minerality.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. I hope the '04s won't go the way of the '02s, of which the whites are falling to premox in a bad way. (Calligramme, I'm looking at you.)
 
My last note, from 4/28/2013: Not the best bottle. Mildly sherried. Nonetheless, completely drinkable and a nice match with Cuban food. Pepper still in evidence but not prominent.

Have some 2010 I haven't tasted yet. Jeff's notes are...noted.
 
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