2013 Cote Rotie Cote Blonde

I found the 2013 Cote Rotie Cote Blonde reductive and hard to read from barrel, and it still shows some reductive aromas from bottle. Olive, truffle, forest floor, violets and ripe, black raspberry-like fruit characteristics flow nicely to a full-bodied, seamless Cote Rotie that has solid mid-palate depth and ripe tannin on the finish. There's lots to like here, but the reductive character will be something to watch and gives me a touch of concern. Give bottles another 4-5 years, at which point it will be easier to see where this is going.

Bright purple. Quite reduced today, with slow-to-open dark fruit and floral qualities and a strong element of cracked pepper. Aeration brings up an exotic note of Asian spices and an expanding floral quality but this is a pretty tough read. Fine-grained tannins give shape and grip to a strikingly long, spice-accented finish.

The 2013 Côte Blonde from René Rostaing is another absolutely stellar bottle of young Côte-Rôtie. The very expressive bouquet is deep, smoky and nascently complex, soaring from the glass in a blend of black cherries, raspberries, gamebird, incipient notes of nutskin, a beautiful base of soil, delicate peppery tones, coffee, youthful stems, woodsmoke and a touch of cedar. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied, focused and utterly suave on the attack, with a superb core of fruit, exceptional transparency, ripe, seamless tannins and excellent focus and grip on the very long, youthful and energetic finish. This could well be the second coming of the legendary 1991 Côte Blonde from René Rostaing! 2023-2075. 95+. Nov 2016, www.viewfromthecellar.com, Drink: 2023-2075