2014 Côte-Rôtie

There’s a new wine here, a textured, energetic Condrieu that’s the brainchild of Corinne and Jean-Paul Jamet’s son, Loïc, who attended viticultural school at Beaune and worked in Meursault, hence his interest in white wines. The 2015 was “a fantastic vintage” to launch the Condrieu, Jean-Paul said, because “you have weight in the wines but they are alive, the fruit is succulent, not cooked.” Jamet said that one had to be highly attentive with the Syrah in 2014, a vintage where he was more concerned with damage caused by fruit flies than rot, “which meant trying to look at every single cluster carefully after veraison.” Luckily, the harvest was late and there was time to do attentive thinning. The result, he said, “is a short yield but with very pleasing results if you like a wine of freshness, not massiveness.”

New oak is used very judiciously here, as Jean-Paul Jamet thinks that "the essential character of Côte-Rôtie is elegance and purity of expression. Strong wood blocks that personality, and that's not good." Long-time followers of this estate's elegant wines would agree with the rhetorical question Jamet asked as we tasted his remarkably pure and delineated 2013 Côte Brune: "Can you imagine this wine with a layer of new oak?"

This estate has now been split between Jean-Paul and his brother Jean-Luc, whose house is right next door to the winery but who I have never met or even laid eyes on since I first visited here 24 years ago. Jean-Paul said that as far as the vineyards and wine+D286making are concerned, nothing has changed, including distribution and allocations to existing customers. Speaking of customers, his most loyal client is his American importer Bobby Kacher, who has been representing Jamet for 35 years now. Jean-Paul likes to age his Côte-Brune cuvée longer than his "normal" wine because he says that the extended aging "helps the oak [30% of it new] to integrate better." That jibes with what I've heard from other producers who practice an extended élevage when a higher percentage of new oak is in play, most notably at Guigal, where the La La wines typically rest in 100% new barrels for 42 months. The 1991 Côte-Rôtie, which I tasted blind at the conclusion of my visit with Jamet, was simply gorgeous, with complex red fruit, floral and mineral aromas and flavors and a hint of smoked meat. Its suave, silky texture says that the wine is comfortably in its drinking window but there's also the requisite concentration to reward more aging in a cool cellar.