Tonight,in celebration of a major research discovery, I cooked some venison steaks and went down to the cellar for a Bambi wine, coming back with:
1995 Chapoutier Cornas nose: initially, simple blueberry fruit, later developing green olive notes palate: medium body, high acidity, smooth tannins, very simple initially, later losing most of its fruit while taking on a green olive characterThis wine was purchased lo those many years ago, back before I'd discovered this group in fact, when I still put faith in the pronoucements of the Pope of Monkton. Since then, I've learned that Chapoutier's wines from that era are not held in high esteem by all who love the wines of the N Rhone, so it was with some trepidation that I opened this bottle. For the first 30 minutes, it was impossible to identify the wine as a N Rhone Syrah, let alone a Cornas. Later, the olive character began to proclaim its origins, but at the same time I noticed a loss of fruit. In the end, this wine might improve over the next 1-2 years, but I wouldn't hold it much longer than that, as there are signs that it may begin fading soon, too. In his review of this wine, RMP was very positive and forecast a lifetime until 2016. Unless your cellar is colder than mine or you won't miss the fruit, I think that that prediction is overly optimistic. In addition, I never got a sense of Cornasness from this wine, as I do/did with the wines of Verset and Clape.
Mark Lipton