Côte Rôtie, Domaine Jean-Paul Jamet 2023

A tasting of the constituent barrels, so this is a provisional score. Gerine has a touch of cold-fireplace aroma from the stems, the tannins are quite strict and the fruit is fresh; it’s tense. Lésardes and Cumelle show some slightly confit-grape scents and a touch of cassis. Tense and fresh, with good acidity and grippy, slightly grainy tannins that are a touch underripe. Truchet is a cooler terroir, showing a touch of white pepper. It’s fuller and more generous in fruit – juicy blackberry – with softer tannins, but still very fresh and tense. Tartaras and Bonnivières had an October harvest; showing beautiful floral expression, with good ripe fruit and tannins and more richness, but it’s still so fresh. Gerine and Moutonnes are showing peat and iodine notes. It’s silky, with good ripe fruit and tannins and a powerful finish. Fongeant has notes of lavender and violet, then it’s very fresh, silky and attractive – just lovely. Le Plan is fuller-bodied, more classic warm-vintage fruit, with great acidity and tannins. Côte Blonde, Côte Bodin and Leya are lifted, silky, pure, complete and beautiful. Landonne is a relatively fine and fresh expression, not as austere as it can be. Virtually all whole bunches this year. Overall, this is looking like a fresh, elegant vintage, in a fairly classic style, rather than the bolder wines that have typified the past eight years. It promises serious complexity in the long term. (Drink between 2034-2050)

Rich red and black fruits, lots of minerality, pepper, and violets all emerge from the 2023 Côte Rôtie, which saw a lot of stem inclusion and is aging primarily in older demi-muids. It's a focused, masculine effort that's nicely structured and has that fresh, crunchy, yet still ripe style that defines the vintage.One of the benchmark estates for traditionally made Côte Rôtie, Domaine Jamet is today run by Jean-Paul Jamet alongside his son Loïc, with the support of Jean-Paul's wife Corinne and daughter Fanny. Located high above the appellation near the village of Le Vallin, the estate farms 25 parcels spread across 17 lieux-dits, with the majority of the holdings in the schist-dominated Côte Brune side of the appellation, including Chavaroche, Le Truchet, Les Moutonnes, Rochins, Fongeant, and La Landonne, as well as prime parcels in the Côte Blonde sector such as Lancement. Winemaking here is classic yet not dogmatic, with a strong preference for whole cluster fermentation with adjustments based on the vintage. The wines are aged primarily in older demi-muids, with 15-30% new oak, and are bottled unfined and unfiltered after about two years. While the flagship Côte Rôtie remains a blend of their numerous parcels, a small-production Côte Brune cuvée was introduced in 2015. While it would be easy to assume the Côte Brune bottling is a richer, more powerful wine, it is often a more perfumed, floral, and elegant expression compared to the classic cuvée. Jean-Paul has commented that while the recent vintages of 2018, 2019, and 2020 bordered on excessive in style, he was thrilled with the 2022s, which mark a return to more stylistically classic ripeness levels and balance.