2011 Ministre Imperial

I have to assume that no one, including the wine’s author, knows what to expect. Abbatucci’s 2011 Cuvee Collection: Ministre Imperial Jacques-Pierre-Charles Abbatucci – for a litany of whose cepages, please consult my review of the sensational 2010 in issue 205 – offers another profoundly delicious lesson in the vinous possible, meaning that until you experience this cuvee for yourself, you will be missing out on an alliance of levity and textural tenderness; florality and purity of fruit; kaleidoscopic interactivity and sheer mouthwatering juiciness that you didn’t realize red wine could deliver. (I’ll grant a certain analogy to Black Muscat, but wines from that cepage do not deliver anything remotely approaching this cuvee’s delicate refinement or mesmerizing complexity.) The most prominent impressions here are of tenderly ripe and scintillatingly aromatic and juicy strawberries tinged with freesia and mint as well as a drop of distillate from the berries. Black tea smokiness and piquancy of cherry pit help set into relief the lusciously pure fruit delivered on a liltingly buoyant, silken palate, while wafting perfume and saliva-liberating salinity accompany a sensationally expansive and persistent finish. Since there have been five vintages of this cuvee, it should soon become possible to address the issue of its bottle potential. Meantime, as with its white “General de la Revolution,” you certainly don’t want to miss out on savoring bottles over the next couple of years given how amazingly delicious this is – and, you’ll soon discover, how versatile too. On the other hand, if you can locate and afford sufficient bottles, hold-back a couple for a longer voyage of discovery. I hope that a substantial share of those reading these lines will by now have had an opportunity to taste at least one wine of Jean-Charles Abbatucci, about whose amazing work I have written on several occasions in this venue, including extensively in my issue 205 report. So I’ll spare you more tales at this time and get right to the wines, of which this summer I was finally able to taste an entire line-up. To verify vintages on the numerous Abbatucci wines that are not of appellation Ajaccio and formally non-vintage, consult the first two digits that appear in tiny print on the back label immediately after the capital “L.” (In the event that such a “lot number” cannot be located – which applies to any non-AOC Abbatucci wines prior to the 2011 harvest – you are at the mercy of your retail or restaurant source, although “Cuvee Collection” wines from before that date do display vintages on their corks.) Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524