Ripe fruit is sweet. But balanced.
Over ripe fruit is cloying, lacking in acid, and sugary to the point of unpleasantness, or lack of balance. For the Clarendon Hills wine, that description doesn’t sound fruity to me.
The biggest firstest difference between fresh and cooked is the loss of volatile aromatic compounds. Not that that necessarily happens in isolation, but it’s been extensively scientifically tested in isolation. Extending hang time and heat of fermentation increase evaporative loss.
Sweet is a taste. Sugar. If one perceives sweetness from smell, that’s a mental association, not an actual determination that a wine is sweet.
Much of the fruity aromatics we can perceive as sweet are esters. Yeast selection or happenstance, and fermentation temperature play a big role. The truthy difference between “old world” and “new world” wines is/was largely due to a lot of tradition European regions passively allowing the native ferments that always worked well, while it became a thing to use isolated yeasts in newer regions, where most of the stains (by usage) had been chosen for the fruit expression impact they’d have on the wines.
Tangent: Sometimes someone will try a young fruity wine and assume its highly ripe, when it was actually picked at moderate ripeness. The only out-of-balance aspect, to some palates, is something that will age away.
Good point about the Penfolds. But like Penfolds, Clarendon has a particular style and they’d be foolish to change. Same with a producer like Caymus. They’ve found a market and they’re selling out, so why mess with success?
Seems like a lot of the Clarendon wines make it over to WTSO. I believe the 2010 Baker’s was offered a few times.
I tasted one of my 2005 ESJ Parmelee-Hill 9 years ago and wrote “Big fruit, some cough syrup quality that I’m sure will settle down with some more time.”
It sounds like I shouldn’t have been so sure.
Rating 98
Drink Date 2018 – 2040
Reviewed by Jeb Dunnuck
Issue Date 13th Sep 2015
The 2010 Cornas Vieilles Vignes is jaw-dropping stuff. Inky colored and incredibly concentrated, with sensational notes of bouquet garni, iron (blind I might have guess 2010 Clape), violets, crushed rock and decent black and blue fruits all soaring from the glass. Full-bodied, layered and pure, with awesome freshness despite it massive size and concentration, it’s a profound Cornas that needs another 3-4 years of bottle age yet will have three decades of overall longevity
<><><>&<><><>Rating 83/84 J. Morris
2010 Alain Voges - Cornas - “Les Vieilles Vignes”: Inky, almost opaque. Slightly skunky/sulfuric/reduced on the nose, though that didn’t particularly bother me. It was the first tip-off that this was a syrah. Some ripe black cherry came up after that. After tasting, I wrote: “Big, but less disgusting syrah [compared to the Clarendon Hills before it]. Very ripe, chewy, fruity, soft tannins.” I guessed a syrah of 10-15 years, but I wasn’t sure where it was from. With air, it got tougher, more tannic. It’s so ripe that the fruit is imprecise, and not nuanced. No lift. On the finish, the fruit seems very ripe, and a bit out of balance, and there’s a trace of heat. This seems like a Cornas for New World syrah lovers. Not typical at all of the appellation, and not particularly interesting.
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Assuming NO bottle variation, reading these two reviews illustrates the ongoing debate of quality, preference and rejection in the world of wine.
Personally, give it another ten/fifteen years to make your ultimate decision. Of course, our tastes, at that point will have likely, been modified and who has the years or wants to gamble? One of the positive aspects of this risk will be significant price appreciation.
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2010 may not have been ripe when compared to other recent vintages, but it is a much riper vintage than anything from the 1980s and most 1990s. I have basically stopped buying Northern Rhône; I find them heavy and no fun to drink. Arguably one of the first casualties of global warming and the hunt for physiological ripeness.
Interesting. Thanks for digging out the Dunnuck note. Jeb consistently prefers wines that are riper than optimal for my palate. Even allowing for differences in taste, I find 98 quite absurd for this wine.
Hope you have 2005 Bassetti and Wylie-Fenaughty They are both top shelf.
Dunnuck’s note reads like a re-hash of a typical Parker note: “Jaw dropping stuff; incredibly concentrated; [aromas] soaring from the glass; full-bodied… massive size and concentration.”
Missing only “hedonistic.”
John, exactly!
The 2007 Alain Voge ‘Les Vielles Vignes’ [Cornas] doesn’t have the overripeness issue that John observes in the first post. It was a cooler vintage I think but the bottle still notes 13.5% abv, and if anything this ruby hued, medium bodied higher acid syrah comes across as Medocain (!) in character to me. The nose is ferrous, iodine and saline to me, with cranberry fruit and white pepper on the palate. Although the now deceased Voge was considered a moderniste in the tiny AOC, I don’t think this example at age 17 comes across as glossy or slick. I’d give this an A- on my scorecard, but I think normal oenophiles would
downgrade it for it’s angular nature.
Color is a fine ruby – and should continue to keep – it fades on the second night open so I’d lean toward consumption. I had this with some lovely pan-roasted chicken thighs and homemade kartoffelklöße with the pan gravy. I’d never made those crouton stuffed potato dumplings before, and enjoyed them, despite the sticky fingered effort.
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Opened a 2009 Alain Voge Cornas last night. A plusher vintage than 2007 but the wine is not over the top imho. Concentrated, medium bodied, high acid syrah. Definitely leaning moderniste but recognizably Cornas. Just entering its drinking window. Proper wine as JLL would put it.
Color looks more proper Cornas black on that 2009.
Checked in on a bottle of the 2016 Les Chailles earlier this week from a case bought en primeur, and although not as over-ripe as John’s original note, just not seeing much other than polished black/blue fruit. Not sure if it’s producer/vintage but feels like a style targeted at Napa Cabernet lovers.
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'11 Voge Cornas VV showed very well a couple of weeks ago. Definitely not overripe, but leaning towards dark-fruit. This could be a case of the vintage restraining the house style.
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