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| Professional Wine Reviews |
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| Wine Advocate |
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| Score: 90 |
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Montcalmes’ 2,000 bottles worth of white 2007 Coteaux du Languedoc – split between Roussanne and Marsanne as well as between the estate’s two soil types, and vinified in new demi-muids – smells sweetly of heliotrope, lily, apple, melons, and honey, with lanolin and vanilla accents from the cask. Saline and chalky inflections to the wine’s honey and nut richness; glossy, creamy palate presence; and surprisingly vivacious finish, give this a decidedly mineral cast. Pourtalie expressed no urgency about bottling, and I suspect it will be worth following for at least 2-3 years post-bottling.
Frederoc Pourtalie – who inherited his family’s extensive Puechabon and Aniane vineyards just over a decade ago, but retains only their best fruit – displays the sort of ambition as well as vinous results one would expect on learning that he is a protege of nearby Grange des Peres’ proprietor Laurent Vaille. Some of Pourtalie’s cobbled, Chateauneuf-like, south-facing acreage in Aniane is capable of ripening Mourvedre – a favorite grape for him – by mid-September. Most of the estate’s Syrah – in northeast- and northwest-facing parcels of ochre-colored chalk resembling that at Mas Daumas Gassac – was planted by his father with an old, local selection in 1980. (A small portion of Syrah on cobbles is subject to a separate bottling, which I did not taste.) The reds here are marked by an absence of new wood, with small barrels 2-3 years old for Syrah and Mourvedre, and even older for Grenache. Pourtalie’s impressively promising, mineral-inflected, and refined 2007 vintage red lots – beautifully marrying richness with brightness and lift – had not been assembled when I tasted them in December, indeed some had only recently finished malo-lactic conversion. -- David Schildknecht |
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