2005 Coteaux du Languedoc Prestige Rouge

The late-released Puech-Haut 2005 Coteaux du Languedoc Saint-Drezery offers the same prominent resinous herbal aromas (suggesting rosemary, marjoram, mint, and spruce) that accrue to the estate’s bottlings from Pic Saint-Loup, mingled with vanilla and spice of toasted oak. A medicinal combination of candied cherry with a bitter, pungent, iodine-like edge is mingled with oak residues on the richly-textured palate, but the wood also seems to have robbed this of a bit of primary sap in the finish, which comes off as just a tad drying. I would be inclined to drink this over the next couple of years, although it was certainly intended for cellaring. Gerard Bru employs oenologist Claude Gros and – at least for a time – numbered Michel Roland among his consultants. This might strike most proprietors as over-kill. And that is also how I am tempted to describe some of the more ambitious cuvees that emerge from his showy cellar and 250 acres of vines near Saint-Drezery and at the southeastern edge of the Pic Saint-Loup sub-appellation. Imported by Jeffrey Davies Signature Selections, Bordeaux; tel. 011 33 556 081 954