2020 Cote Rotie Les Rochains
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Tasting notes
Vivid purple. Displays pungent, mineral- and spice-accented dark fruit, licorice, potpourri and smoked meat scents that open up steadily with aeration. Chewy and focused on the palate, offering bitter cherry, cassis and fruitcake flavors that are braced by a spine of juicy acidity. Dusty tannins firm the impressively long finish, which strongly echoes the cherry and floral notes.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jeb Dunnuck
Josh Raynolds
More reviews and scores
Dramatically different, the 2020 Côte Rôtie Les Rochins is more meaty, bloody, and iron-driven aromatically, yet on balance it has beautiful finesse and elegance. This comes from the Côte Brune and has plenty of tannins, medium to full body, gorgeous balance, and one heck of a great finish. It’s not for the early crowd though.
Tasted after the very impressive Lancement, the 2020 Cote Rotie les Rochins suffered by comparison, offering up less opulent notes of green olives and red raspberries. Medium to full-bodied, it nevertheless comes across as a bit lacking in richness. Hopefully, that says more about the quality of the preceding wine and the taster's state of palate fatigue, as this was near the end of a long Sunday of visits.