Ratings & Tasting Notes:

CellarTracker Community:

The community consensus describes a wine that has moved well into its savoury phase. Recent tasters report a gamey, meaty character over dark, slightly baked fruit, with peppery spice, liquorice, leather and warm earth on the nose, and a juicy palate carrying chalky but integrated tannins. Earlier notes found it rounded and easy, with fresh strawberry and red-fruit aromatics and a soft, supple finish. The prevailing view among reviewers is that the wine is past the window it was built for, and is best approached as a mature curiosity.

Cult Wines International Notes:

Étienne Guigal arrived in Ampuis at fourteen and spent fifteen years working at Vidal-Fleury before founding his own house in 1946. His son Marcel took over in 1961 and did more than anyone alive to restore Côte-Rôtie’s standing in the world, above all through the three single-vineyard bottlings known as the La Las: La Mouline, La Landonne and La Turque. Philippe Guigal, the third generation, runs the house today. Alongside those rarities Guigal makes what is probably the most widely poured Côtes du Rhône on earth, a Syrah-led blend with Grenache and Mourvèdre given a long, patient élevage in large oak foudres. It is the wine that introduced a generation of drinkers to the Rhône, and it carries the same name and the same cellars as bottles that sell for hundreds of times the price.

2001 was an excellent year across the southern Rhône, warm and even, giving wines with unusual depth for the appellation. This is not a bottling built for the cellar, though, and at a quarter of a century it sits well beyond the window its maker intended. Tasters opening it in recent years have found a wine turned savoury and gamey over dark, slightly baked fruit, with peppery spice, liquorice, leather and warm earth, juicy in the mouth and grippy but softening, austere rather than generous. Treat it as a birth-year bottle and a curiosity rather than a wine to measure against its younger self. Open it carefully, pour gently off the sediment, and drink it the same evening.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.

Condition:

Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold.

Outstanding condition.