2011 La Joie

I tasted a wide range of bottled wines during my visit at Vérité, but it may have been the young 2014s from barrel that were the most informative of all. Pierre Seillan makes rich, voluptuous wines built on texture. Seillan favors long elevage, the last part of which is done in steel, which he believes helps integrate the new oak. In fact, Seillan was due to bottle his 2012s just after my visit, long after most Bordeaux blends were bottled in Napa Valley or Sonoma. Because these wines spend so much time in both barrel and tank before they are bottled, I generally am able to taste them a few times before they are released. Following that evolution can be quite illuminating. But what I came away with after tasting the 2014s is that these wines start with an extraordinary level of both purity and freshness that is remarkable. I am not so sure that all the time in the cellar is always beneficial, though. At times I think that with a little less work, the Vérité wines could be even better. The 2011s have turned out very nicely, although they are a departure from the hosue style as they are disinctly Old World, savory wines with more herbal notes than is common. A more typical sense of California opulence informs the 2012s, while the 2013s capture the essence of this great vintage in their exhilarating combination of ripeness and structure.

Three mini-verticals of recent vintages of the Verite wines with Pierre Seillan in March made it abundantly clear, once again, that this is one of the most consistently extraordinary sets of Bordeaux blends made in the New World.Seillan bottles late (the 2011 was finished in January of this year), but noted that the wines spend the last ten months of their elevage in tank.Prior to that, they are aged for about 15 months in all-new French oak barrels made by Jackson Family Wines with wood from 15 different forests.This approach routinely yields wines with well-integrated oak and outstanding retention of primary fruit.Seillan considers 2011 to be a great year ("terroir is No. 1") but believes that the 2010s will reach peak drinkability later.His 2012s had been racked into tank about three weeks before my tasting.

This is a beautiful set of wines from Pierre Seillan and Verité. There are three main wines at Verité; La Muse is a Merlot-based wine, while Cabernet Sauvignon plays the leading role in La Joie. Le Desir is a Cabernet Franc/Merlot blend that typically includes smaller amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and/or Merlot. The 2010s, which I have always adored here, appear to have shut down a bit in bottle, most likely because of the high acidity of the year. Seillan has done a terrific job with the 2011s, which qualitatively are very much in line with previous vintages. The 2011s are of course a bit more floral and savory than is often the case here, but that is just the style of the year. Incredibly, whereas yields for most wineries are way down in 2011 and up in 2012, at Verité production levels are essentially the same across the vintages for La Joie and Le Desir, and only down about 10% for La Muse. As always, these are intense wines built on texture, richness and volume.

I tasted a wide range of wines with Pierre Seillan during my most recent visit to Verite. The 2010s were still in tank awaiting imminent bottling. For that reason, the wines were a little closed down relative to how they showed last year. The 2011 and 2010 harvests both started on September 26, but the 2010 harvest ended in mid-October, while the 2011s were picked all the way to the end of the month. Seillan describes 2011 as an earlier drinking vintage next to 2010, although given the way these wines age, I would not be surprised if the 2011s develop nicely in bottle. Seillan told me he performed aggressive leaf pulling two weeks before the harvest in order to get the fruit ripe. I also tasted all the 2002s and 2003s, and was particularly impressed with the 2002s, all wines that have held up well.