2023 Saint Cosme, Côtes du Rhône Rouge, Rhone Valley, France.
As always, this deeply purple/garnet hued Côtes du Rhône red is fabulous, pure, spicy and delicious, it is an outstanding value, with this 2023 again being as good as many wines that are three or four times the price. Usually Côtes du Rhône reds include a mix of varietals, but this Saint Cosme is 100% Syrah lacks for nothing, and has plenty to offer with a clean full bodied palate and excellent complexity showing boysenberry, damson plum, black cherry, dark currant and fig fruits, along with wild sage, peppercorn, black licorice and mocha notes. There’s loads of pleasure and silken tannin with an almost creamy mouth feel and balancing acidity and savory crunch, adding a nice aromatic floral array in the glass. Again, it’s hard to imagine a more tasty Rhône for the money than this violet and geranium laced Saint Cosme Côtes du Rhône. The fabulous basic Saint Cosme Cotes du Rhone is made, as mentioned, from 100% Syrah, comes from what Barruol calls top vineyard parcels, saying he is no magician, knowing only great sites made great wines. Saint Cosme mostly sources grapes for this little beauty from plots in Vinsobres, now a full AOC, which is a special area of the southern Rhone that is sublimely suited to Syrah.
Louis Barruol’s historic and legendary Château de Saint Cosme, as noted here in my prior reviews, is located north to the village of Gigondas, a place and a wine which he is most famous for, is the oldest estate in the region being on the site of an ancient Gallo-Roman villa which dates back to 1416. It is very probable that it already had its own vineyard back then, as well as having cellars carved from the natural limestone walls, with the Barruol family acquiring it back in 1570, and who, in my opinion, have made it into one the Rhone’s greatest estates. Uniquely, this Saint Cosme Côtes du Rhône saw a very short vatting period, in cement, a technique pioneered by Louis Barruol’s father, as he notes, in fact, back in the 1970s and 1980s, typically this wine only gets about 15 days in vats! After which the wine is bottled and matured for just a few months before being shipped out, surprisingly the wine shows off depth and structure that allows both early drinking rewards and can age up to 5 or so years, though it doesn’t usually get that kind of time in anyone’s cellar. This, as mentioned before, allows really fresh details, expressive fruitiness and without any oaky notes, making for a wine that is great with a range of cuisine options and especially meaty dishes, pizza and or roast chicken over bitter greens. I highly recommend all of the Château de Saint Cosme wines, especially all the Gigondas offerings, as well as the Vinsobres, and the different Côtes du Rhône bottlings.
($18 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive