jamie goode's wine blog: Elian da Ros cheapie

Monday, February 19, 2007

Elian da Ros cheapie

If, like me, you are an irredeemable wine nut, you'll probably have a tendency to buy more wine than you can drink. This is something I've battled with for a while: it's a problem that's compounded if you are thinking in terms of building a cellar. You can always justify another purchase as one for the future. My problem is that I get tempted by offers and end up buying stuff for near to mid-term drinking that I just can't get through. Particularly when I have a pile of samples to wade through.

One such wine was Elian da Ros' Vignoble de Cocumont 1999 Vin de Pays de l'Agenais. I recently found an untouched case which I'd bought a few years back from La Vigneronne (now Grand Cru Wines) for about £3 a bottle, which, it must be said, was a remarkable price for this half decent wines. Elian's wines have plenty of gutsy stuffing, tasting like a half-way house between serious Claret and a beefy Madiran. This, his entry wine, has evolved nicely - now it's showing minerally, chalky blackcurrant fruit (quite Claret-like) with some serious spicy tannins and good acidity. It's turning a bit earthy with bottle age, and overall, I reckon this wine is now peaking in a rather chunky, rustic sort of way. I'm enjoying it a good deal, but then I don't mind robust, tannic reds. One thing that has surprised me with his 1998s and 1999s is the amount of wine travel on the corks, which I've illustrated in the picture. There's something odd about the corks he's used, and I don't know what it is.

The other wine I sampled this evening is the bretty Thevenet Morgon I blogged on a few days back. Aromatically, this is interesting, but the phenol-like metallic brett on the palate is too much. I'm convinced that brett really only works in sweeter, more southern wines where there's something to counter that distinctive bretty signature.

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5 Comments:

At 3:18 AM, Blogger Paul Tudor said...

Re. Brett - what did the 97 Pavie-Macquin look like? Was it clean?

 
At 5:45 AM, Blogger The Cheap Lush said...

Dear Jamie--

Does a large amount of wine travel on the cork of a young wine invariably indicate heat damage? Also, what about older wines? At a restaurant here in Brooklyn, NY, I recently ordered a 1990 Janasse Chaupin Chateauneuf du Pape. The cork was stained nearly to the top, and while the wine was definitely alive, it was showing some stewed flavors on the palate. A burgundy from the same vintage and the same cellar had a pristine cork. Was the Chaupin damaged, or is wine travel an acceptable byproduct of bottle age?

Thanks,
C.L.

thecheaplush.blogspot.com

 
At 10:08 AM, Blogger Jamie said...

Paul, I think it was pretty clean, but I didn't have my brett head on - it could b that if I were to revisit it, I might detect a little, but I try not to taste in this sort of ultra-analytical way - I'll report brett if it's a distinctive feature of the wine, but a little in the right context doesn't make me jump up and down.

CL, not always is the unhelpful answer. Some corks just seem to allow more wine travel than others, although heat damaged wines will often show more travel. I imagine that a poor seal, allowing lots of wine travel, would result in wine oxidation which might be hard to distinguish from heat damage. Indeed, part of heat damage is probably oxidation.

 
At 12:31 PM, Anonymous Kinley said...

Jamie: too much wine? Have a sale! Myself and I'm sure many others would like to taste a bottle of what you have lying around and not drinking (complete with TNs on the blog).

 
At 3:13 PM, Anonymous Keith Prothero said...

Put it this way Jamie. My wife describes me as "The Imelda Marcos of Wine"

 

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