2012 Cote Rotie Belle Helene
Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
In the same ballpark qualitatively as the 2011, the 2012 Côte Rôtie La Belle Hélène is a touch richer and more concentrated, yet still shows a similarly charming, seamless, incredibly seductive style. Red and black fruits, spring flowers, forest floor, cured meats, and truffly earth all flow to a full-bodied, deep, opulent, unctuous 2012 with soft tannins, a fleshy, opulent mouthfeel, and incredible length on the finish. It's impossible to resist today yet has another 15 years of prime drinking.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jeb Dunnuck
Jeff Leve, The Wine Cellar Insider
More reviews and scores
Saturated ruby. Heady aromas of candied dark berries, incense and licorice are complemented by suggestions of candied violet and five-spice powder. Supple, deeply flavored and energetic, offering powerful blackberry and floral pastille flavors and a zesty peppery nuance. The smooth, strikingly long finish features lingering sweetness, a hint of allspice and subtle, slow-building tannins.
A wine that could flirt with perfection at maturity, the 2012 Côte Rôtie Cuvée Belle Helene is the polar opposite of the perfumed, finesse styled Lancement and offers a dense, powerful, masculine personality. Inky-colored, full-bodied, sensationally concentrated and still balanced and seamless, it offers a serious bouquet of dark fruits (cassis, black raspberries), crushed rock, charcoal, graphite and wood smoke. The more rounded style of the 2012 vintage gives this a touch of upfront charm, but it really needs 6-7 years of cellaring and will have three decades or more of longevity.