Rene Rostaing, Cote Rotie, Cote Blonde 1998

1.0cm; nicked labels

98 Points CellarTracker 

Blew me away. All the expected Syrah notes — lots of pepper and leather and meat, but with the most amazing ethereal quality on the nose, the platonic ideal of a cote rotie Syrah. I could spend all day with it. Palate is restrained, good with food. 12/23/2023

96 Points CellarTracker 

Long, exotic, rich, full and deep, the sensually-textured, red fruits fill your palate, lingering and expanding. This is drinking in the sweet spot today. If you are lucky enough to have a bottle in your cellar, now is the time to be drinking it. 7/3/2022

A masculine, ripe expression of Côte Rôtie, the 1998 Côte Rôtie Côte Blonde offers up tons of blackberry and cassis fruit to go with notions of smoked meats, iron and earth. Hitting the palate with blockbuster levels of concentration and a voluptuous, sexy texture, it still has a surprising amount of tannin that come through on the finish. (JD) (2/2015)

The 1998 vintage was quite hot in Côte-Rôtie, but also a drought vintage and the vines tended to struggle a bit to fully ripen the fruit (at least in comparison to the perfection of the ’99 growing season), and consequently, the ’98 Côte Blonde shows a bit more of a “cooler fruit” tone from its less thorough ripeness. That said, this too is a superb wine in the making, delivering a fine bouquet of black raspberries, dark berries, black olives, a very strong base of soil, black pepper and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex, with a bit of chewy tannin still to resolve, fine focus and balance and a long, tangy and quite soil-driven finish. This will be another reference point vintage for the Rostaing Côte Blonde, but it still needs four or five more years to shed a bit more tannin. (9/2014)

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