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Bright, dark, moderately saturated red to the rim. Very sexy scents of black raspberry, mocha, graphite, tobacco, licorice, game and spices, lifted by a floral topnote. Moderately sweet on entry, then shows a fine-grained texture and lovely savory concentration to its berry, spice and floral flavors. At once dense and juicy, even if it doesn't show quite the complexity or detail of the better later vintages of this bottling. Finishes with firm, dusty, slightly drying tannins and very good subtle length. I wanted a bit more sweetness of fruit. With 48 hours in the recorked bottle, this was the supplest and juiciest of the three Vérité 2001s but not the densest or richest. And the tannins turned a bit more clenched.
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(winemaker Pierre Seillan's Pomerol blend, based on merlot) Bright ruby-red. Roasted red berries, tobacco, game, coffee and animal fur on the nose. Lush, layered and sweet, with sexy flavors of roasted berries and game. Finishes uncompromisingly dry, with building, ripe tannins.
2001 was the first truly great vintage for Jess Jackson and Pierre Seillan, and that is evidenced by the utterly perfect 2001 La Muse, a blend of 87% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Malbec. Over three-fourths of it came from the Alexander Mountain estate of Jess Jackson, and the rest from Chalk Hill, Knights Valley, and a tiny bit from Bennett Valley. This dense purple-colored effort exhibits notes of licorice, creme de cassis, plum sauce, violets and truffles. Full-bodied with magnificent density, overall equilibrium, stunning purity, sweet but abundant tannin and a fabulous finish, this profound wine remains a baby at age ten. Give it another 5-6 years of bottle age and drink it over the following 35-40+ years. It is very French in style even though one could argue that this level of concentration can only be achieved by a handful of wines from Pomerol and St.-Emilion. ||These are the visionary efforts of the recently deceased Jess Jackson, one of the great men in California’s history of high quality winemaking. Verite was started in 1998, when Jess Jackson brought over Bordelais winemaker Pierre Seillan, and essentially gave him carte blanche authority to pick the best fruit he could to fashion these three cuvees. La Muse is his verison of a Pomerol, made from Jess Jackson’s high-elevation vineyards in Alexander Valley, Knights Valley and Chalk Hill, the La Joie is his Medoc look-alike from a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and of course, Le Desir is a Sonoma clone of a St.-Emilion, made generally from high quantities of both Merlot and Cabernet Franc, with just a little Cabernet Sauvignon in them. These wines are the epitome of natural wine, aged 24-32 months in new French oak, with wood staves selected by Jackson and his team in France, and the wines then bottled unfined and unfiltered. There’s no acidification, no additional concentration by reverse osmosis, and obviously no water added. The production of each cuvee runs between 1,500 and 2,000 cases. According to Pierre Seillan, the aim was to produce wines capable of lasting 25, or in some cases, even 40+ years, and based on the three vertical tastings I did of all the cuvees made to date, the great vintages will certainly attain that potential longevity.||Tel. (707) 433-9000; Fax (707) 431-1261 Wine Advocate.June, 2011
About the producer
The winery was the dream of Jess Jackson, the man who founded the incredibly successful Jackson Family Wines. He, however, wanted to produce truly fine wine in Sonoma County.