I had heard many good things about the Cornas of Nicolas Serette from many people whose tastes I respect. I trust very few palates in the wine business besides my own, but when Levi Dalton of the famousI'll Drink to That Podcast says it is good, I listen. [Especially if it is not Italian. Should put a winking emoji here, but is the world ready for emojis in wine e-mails?]
I am so happy to be able to offer the 2011 Cornas "Patou" from Nicolas Serrette ($39.99) as I believe it is the best value you can find in the Northern Rhone from one of the big three appellations. They are Cote-Rotie, Hermitage and Cornas. Try and find a good Hermitage or Cote-Rotie for $40 a bottle. You can't. I bought this direct, cut out 2 tiers and am passing on the savings to you.
This is classic Cornas. Inky, black fruit, ripe and concentrated yet there is a breeding and elegance that suggests much more down the road for this Syrah. I have an extremely limited amount and will have to allocate accordingly, so please get your orders in quickly. Everybody should get wine but when dealing with such tiny amounts it can be hard to please all the people all the time so I thank you in advance for your understanding.
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Nicolas, like Henrik Mobitz, has a day job as well. He is a computer programmer and tends to his vines at night. Nicolas, as soon as you meet him, is about as passionate a vigneron as you can imagine. Very pleasant, with perfect English (I speak ZERO French) and a deep knowledge of Cornas and all the growers in it.
The name Serrette goes way back in Cornas to 1515 and the Serrette family has owned vines since 1938. Nicolas' first vintage was 2006, but before that it was called Dumien-Serette and they sold to all the big negociants in the area: Delas, Jaboulet and Chapoutier. In 1983 they decided to bottle their own wine and the wine world is a better place as a result.
The Patou vineyard is where most of the Serrette holdings are (2 hectares) with the remaining .2 ha in Mazards. This is not a lot of land. Cornas, itself, is very small, so small in fact, that after the tasting, we asked Nicolas where we could dine on the local fare, and because it was around 2pm and everything was closed, he said Mcdonald's was the only option. We did a double take, but I was so starving, that I did not care. My business partner, a self-proclaimed gourmand, had to be convinced by me that French McDonald's was not that bad. I mean there is table service! Hello??
Nicolas farms organically and uses organic fertilizer but is not certified. He presses the grapes in an old fashioned basket press. He then ages the wine in 2-7 year old barrels for two years. No secrets or sorcery just old school Cornas made in a very traditional way.
Back to the wines. This wine, ideally, even in a somewhat forward and accessible vintage like 2011, needs some bottle age. It can be drunk now if you like very concentrated grapey young wine, but for it to show it's Cornas character it needs time. my guess is that it will hit its peak in 10-15 years.
Please reply to this E-Mail by Monday April 5th at 9 PM EST with your orders. After that I cannot accept any more orders.
This wine will be allocated - I can't confirm orders until Friday.
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| We tasted with Nicolas in the cellar for around 40 minutes. We tasted different components of Patou and Mazards. It was a fascinating exercise as some barrels were hugely fruity, some were massively structured and some were very aromatic. We tasted an approximate blend of the final wine and as soon as he blended it in my glass with samples from multiple barrels, I knew we were in the presence of a master blender. It had all the components of all the barrels but it was all in harmony. The wine is intensely structured, grapey and massively concentrated at this point. Fun to taste and drink now, but as said previously it will take 10-15 years to really strut down the Cornas runway. |
These wines will arrive in the Fall.
Please reply to this E-Mail by A[ril 5th at 9 PM EST with your orders. After that I cannot accept any more orders.
If I could please ask you to hit reply and send me your billing and shipping addresses along with your order if you are a first time customer. My phone number is 917-912-4355 and you can reach me to give me your CC #'s (we prefer not to receive credit card numbers over E-Mail). You will have an invoice within 72 hours after the offer ends. |
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