This smells really lovely, an excellent vintage from this excellent producer.
Crozes-Hermitage “La Guiraude” 2005, Alain Graillot
What a nose! Luxurious ripe fruit, real earthy complexity and flashes of Crozes cheap cologne. This is a totally attractive and utterly lovely nose, and this is ‘mere’ Crozes, triple-tmesis-A. The palate has really nice fruit, a lovely spicy/pepper character and a refined tannic structure. It has a nice Croze-y greenness on the finish, which is really satisfying. This might be ripe, but it is perfectly balanced and very refined. And very, very stylish. Alain Graillot is a cool geezer, alright.
This cheap cologne thing, you must explain! It’s true that, like a good joke, analogies can’t translate, but I would like some depth here!
Your memory fails you, I wonder just how good at blind tasting you’d be these days…
James Hardy in his first year in the blind tasting team memorably noticed that Crozes has a distinct cheap cologne character on the nose. This note has served me, and many other people I have taught to blind taste, very well.
I think my problem is that I have little experience of cheap cologne! I would imagine my blind tasting skill have decreased from “Ninja” level to that of “Tab”.
I remember there was once a good Tab.
Don’t be absurd. The only good tab is the one who escaped to Oxford!
Who’s memory is failing here? I’ll take credit for that “cheap cologne” descriptor, as first applied to Graillot Crozes 1992.
David, get well, get some sleep, stop hurling and start posting again!