2020 Maison Les Alexandrins, Crozes-Hermitage Rouge, Northern Rhône, France.
The ripe, deeply purple hued and full-bodied Maison Les Alexandrins Cross-Hermitage Rouge is a pure and almost chocolatey Northern Rhône Syrah with seamless dark blackberry, currant, damson plum, cherry and blueberry fruits along with subtle bacon, camphor, licorice, peppercorns and violet notes. Not as feral or gamey as old school Crozes or Cornas, this Maison Les Alexandrins offers up a lot of pleasure for the buck and is a real crowd pleaser with smooth tannins and lingering flavors, it will good nicely with a range of meat dishes too, giving it some welcome flexibility on a restaurant list. This was the second vintage I tried of this wine and it was very consistent with my first impressions, and my tasting group all loved it with any dissent, which is a rare occurrence!
A partnership between three winegrowers from the Rhône Valley, Nicolas Jaboulet, Guillaume Sorrel and Alexandre Caso, Maison les Alexandrins produces northern wines in a modern clean style, which are also very good values as well. This Crozes-Hermitage, that is of course 100% Syrah, comes from a blend from the villages near Mercurol with a mix of elevation and soils, including schist and gravel along with some clay and mineral matter. The maceration and fermentation are done with all de-stemmed fruit and goes for about 20 days with pumping over for the first few days and then punching down towards the end to achieve complete extraction of color and tannin. The aging is in conical vats and demi-muids or 600L used oak casks for 10 months. I am a big fan of Crozes, especially for the price, as it is hard to afford the Hermitage and Côte-Rotie offerings these days and this one does the job very well.
($30 Est.) 90 Points, grapelive