The regular Cotes du Rhone is an early drinking wine made from about 85% Grenache, but the Font d'Estevanas is a more serious effort using Syrah clones obtained from Hermitage. The Alarys also make a reserve bottling from the Font d'Estevanas property that is made from Grenache, called "La Jean de Verde" - I haven't tasted that wine, but based on several vintages of Font d'Estevanas I have tried, I would be quite interested in making its acquaintance.
The 2001 is just now being released in our market at $27.50 (US about $20 and probably available for less if you look around. I opened a bottle a couple of hours ahead of tasting it and 'tossed' it into a carafe to get some air. Then I tried it before dinner, with dinner and after dinner, alone and with cheese, for a total of about 3 hours tasting. The wine is fairly dark with purple edges. The nose was overwhelmingly that of warm sweet jam, with both blackberry and cassis elements. This was at variance with previous vintages, in which I had noted some pepper and a plummier style of fruit, but never quite the level of blackberries that I observed here.
The initial impression in the mouth was one of mild surprise that it wasn't even bigger, as the nose was consistent with the huge Australian wines I'd been tasting the night before. Once I readjusted my expectations, I found it to be quite well balanced, not too sweet and with only soft tannins.
An hour later, I retasted with food and the wine surprised me by showing much more tannin than I'd noticed on first tasting it, and it had become a little sweeter in the mouth. By the time I tasted it for the last time, these tannins had smoothed out a bit. There was also a little tar in the nose by now, but that was a characteristic I had observed much earlier with previous vintages - perhaps it was just swamped by all the blackberry.
The wine is a very good Cotes du Rhone - however it is pressing the edge of credibility with the price in our market. If it were $5 less, it would be a buy by the case sort of wine, but it pushes into regions where there are quite a few other interesting wines to choose from, and that will undoubtedly hurt sales. Nevertheless a very nice wine performing at well above the customary Cotes du Rhone Villages level.