2012 Côte-Rôtie La Viallière

According to Alexis Gerin, in 2013 the domain's fruit was able to achieve a long, steady maturation that has resulted in wines that will show complexity early and be far easier to enjoy on the young side than their 2012 siblings. That said, he considers the younger vintage to be one "of real pleasure, where the wines have a very agreeable nature and texture--a lot like the 2006s," a vintage that he correctly pointed out is one where the wines never really shut down and are now fully inside their drinking window. Alexis described the domain's relatively new bottling of La Viallière (2009 was the first vintage) as probably his father Jean-Michel's proudest accomplishment. It took him over 12 years to amass the family's 1.8-hectare holding of this legendary vineyard, "and who knows how long that would take now? A lot more than 12 years, that's for sure."

I tasted through this year's set of wines with Jean-Michel Gerin's son Alexis, who has recently been taking on more responsibility at the family domain along with his brother Michael.He's among those who find the 2011s "quite fine and often delicate," which he thinks makes them wines to drink young "for their pretty fruit and because the fragility of structure, even if there's balance, makes them a risk to age too long."That's not the case with the 2012s, he added, "because even though they show a lot of fruit now, there's good acidity and tannins underneath.Not like the 2010s of course, but with the right material to age."