2004 Tertre-Rôteboeuf

Wine Details
Place of Origin

France

Bordeaux

Color

Red

Grape/Blend

Merlot

Reviews & Tasting Notes

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Francois Mitjavile prizes 2006 for its combination of freshness and ripeness. He compared the new vintage to 1996, but believes that the better 2006s are riper and more gracious wines that will blossom more fully than the earlier vintage. "July here was terribly dry, and the conditions built small grapes. At that point we were expecting a very early harvest. But then the rains in September resulted in a very quick spread of rot in certain areas, and picking at the right time was crucial. This season brought the biggest crop of mushrooms all over France in my lifetime." Once again, I was struck by how distinctive Mitjavile's wines are, his Roc de Cambes (a property in the Cotes de Bourg) as well as the Tertre Roteboeuf: with their exotic, liqueur-like sweetness, creaminess of texture and pronounced torrefaction qualities, they stand out from virtually all the other wines I taste each year in Bordeaux. Mitjavile emphasizes that he makes "very worked wines" of elevage: typically they are racked a good nine times before they are bottled.

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"Since 1982 there have been two main kinds of vintages in Bordeaux," said Francois Mitjavile: "early, low-acid vintages that often show a heavy, animal character, and later vintages with fresh acidity and vibrant, more classic fruit flavors that some people would describe as lacking in maturity. But 2005 is the first vintage since 1982 that offers both total ripeness and freshness. There's a brilliance to the fruit in 2005. Some people have slightly underripe tannins that are well-buffered by fruit. But others have overextracted and gotten rude, hard tannins." Mitjavile noted that he did not harvest especially late in 2005, as he wanted to preserve freshness of fruit. "I only pick late in years when it's hard to ripen the fruit," he said.

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According to Francois Mitjavile, 2003 was a terribly hot year during which the vineyards suffered. "The 2003 wines are extremely concentrated, black wines but also rude and aggressive, if not cooked," said Mitjavile. "The huge flowering in the late spring of 2004 then exhausted the vines. With the summer came an explosion of black and red septentrionale [northern in character] fruits. The problem is that it was nearly impossible to get the tannins thoroughly ripe, and the vintage has high acidity. Even here, our skins are not riper than those of 2002, but the fruit is explosive in 2004." Incidentally, Mitjavile's concept of terroir, of making a true estate wine, calls for growing the best possible fruit and then using it all: he has never made a second wine.