2009 Côte-Rôtie Maison Rouge

Paul Ansellem calls 2011 "a very good year for viognier; the 2010s have more acidity but the '11s don't lack for it in any way.It's a vintage where older vines were a bigger benefit than usual.They always are but it's in the difficult years that you really see the advantage."Discussing the ability of Condrieu to handle oak and whether it's a good idea in the first place, Paul told me, "The error is to use too much new oak if the wine comes from young vines.It just won't have the material to handle the influence and then the wine's character is obliterated."He also emphasized the point that harvest timing is more critical with viognier than most varieties because "with viognier the acidity goes up during fermentation, so it's a mistake to pick too early thinking that you're preserving acidity.You have to be patient or the fruit in the wine will be vegetal."As for the red wines here, he calls 2010 "a more complete and nuanced vintage than 2009.If you think in terms of shapes, 2009 is spherical while 2010 is oval, egg-shaped, so tensile and strong, with better balance and elegance and not as much bombast."Paul is a concert-level pianist (as is his brother, Michel, who has accompanied Carla Bruni for years) and is inclined to musical analogies: he summed up 2009 as "more Beethoven, or Brahms, or Mick Jagger, while 2010 is more Mozart, Bach or Bryan Ferry."