2017 Côte-Rôtie Réserve

Stéphane Ogier, who represents the seventh generation of his family in Ampuis, said that the 2017s are “on the tight side, because of their tannins, especially for a hot year” and hopes that people won’t be in a rush to open them too soon. He thinks that his 2018s, which I also tasted, “will be ready to drink, for sure, sooner than the ‘17s,” which he believes will be showing their best sometime “between seven and 10 years old, but will last for longer.” He described 2017 as “a pretty serious vintage, with the depth to age. The same is true for 2019.” One major factor in the freshness of the 2018s, he added, is that “because it was a full crop, there isn’t super-concentration to the wines, so you see more finesse and detail.” A recent move that Ogier has decided to make will see the Côte-Rôtie Réserve being held back for release at a later date. “Maybe three more years, maybe five, depending on how it shows,” he told me. That’s on account of too many bottles getting opened and drunk up, “especially at restaurants,” well before the wine is showing its best. “If you want to drink one now, make it the Mon Village,” he said, adding that “it’s the reason there are two bottlings now (aside from the single-vineyard bottlings and the Belle Hélène), so that there’s one for now and one for later.” The 2017 La Belle Hélène hadn’t been bottled when I visited Ogier’s cellar on March 11, so that review will be included in our upcoming article on barrel tastings of 2019 and 2018 northern Rhône wines.

Stephane Ogier has moved completely away from the use of barriques to demi-muids and foudres for raising his wines. He told me that he has no interest in oak "having any influence on the wines. Oak is a common denominator" he told me. "I want the wines to be as expressive as possible of their origin and too much new wood has a real way of masking that." Ogier now owns just over 11 hectares of vines in Côte-Rôtie, with substantial holdings in the appellation's most esteemed lieux-dits. Ogier has recently begun bottling small lots of those sites on their own in a terroir-expression project. Unfortunately, when I say "small lots" I mean extremely small lots. On the subject of his 2017s, Stephane Ogier told me that “it was essential to pay attention to getting fruit with too much ripeness.” He said he wasn’t concerned so much with structure “because the berries and bunches were very small so tannins weren’t going to be an issue, it was more about acidity and keeping freshness.” The wines, he thinks, are very deep and powerful, “with lots of dark fruit character” and he added that they’ll be pleasurable on the early side, with the ability but not the requirement to age. “If aging is important that’s what we have 2015 for,” he noted. The 2015s are definitely hands-off material now and in need of at least another 10 years or so of patience given their depth and structure.