Another meaty one

There could well be plenty of Rhône wine notes over the coming months as I have just been back to my cellar in Oxford and picked out quite a few 1996 and 1997 Northern-Rhône wines.

Côte-Rôtie 1997, Bernard Burgaud

A soft nose of mature red fruit. It is ripe but by no means over-ripe; quite sedate, in fact. M. Burgaud says he aims for ‘noble tannins’ in his wine. This wine is certainly tannic, but those tannins have softened with time and the wine is most pleasingly soft and charming. It has plenty of red fruit on the palate, a balancing backbone of tannin and acidity and is quite long. This is not a great vintage, but the wine is quite lovely. Up for drinking, too.