2016 L'Aventure Cuvée Les Demoiselles
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Tasting notes
The 2016 Les Demoiselles is a 60/40 split of Mourvèdre and Syrah that was brought up mostly in used barrels and amphora tanks. It’s full-bodied, layered, and pure, with fabulous notes of cassis and blueberry fruits intermixed with ample smoked meats, sappy herbs, and olive tapenade. One of the more backward wines in the lineup, give it a good 3-4 years of bottle age and it should cruise for a decade or more. Consistently thrilling wines come from l’Aventure, which is run with incredible talent and passion by St. Emilion native Stephan Asseo. His 2016s are incredible efforts, and the 2017 more Rhône blends are certainly in the same ballpark. Due to the heat spikes at harvest, Bordeaux varieties were much more difficult and hit or miss.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
Youthful purple. A highly perfumed bouquet evokes ripe dark berries, candied flowers, incense and exotic spices, along with a smoky mineral overtone. Pliant, seamless and intensely spicy on the palate, offering deeply concentrated, mineral-laced blackberry, bitter cherry, vanilla and floral pastille flavors that firm up slowly as the wine opens up. Concentrated yet energetic, even lithe, delivering strong finishing thrust and dusty, well-knit tannins that come in late.
A blend of 60% Mourvèdre and 40% Syrah, the 2016 Demoiselles Proprietary Red offers up a dramatic nose of black cherries, cassis, warm spices and creamy new oak. On the palate, it's full-bodied, rich and layered, with a chewy chassis of tannins and extract concealed in an ample core of dark fruit preserve. The finish is long and youthfully taut.
The 2016 Les Demoiselles is a 60/40 split of Mourvèdre and Syrah that’s still aging in barrel. This inky colored beauty knocks it out of the park with its chalky, mineral-driven bouquet of blackberries, liquid violets and licorice. With building structure, full-bodied richness and a great finish, it’s another big wine from Stephan that stays impeccably balanced and pure. It’s going to need short term cellaring. Located in the heart of the appellation, just off highway 46, Stephan Asseo’s l’Aventure Winery is unquestionably in the top 3-4 estates in Paso Robles. While he made just a handful of cuvees in the past, today he releases upwards of eight cuvees in each vintage. In addition, he’s just completed construction on a new cave/winery, and he continues to fine tune the style here, experimenting with amphora and larger barrels, with the goal of getting more elegance and purity into his wines. Looking at the wines reviewed here, the 2015s are certainly rock solid, and show tighter, elegant, and structured personalities. His 2016s are a step up over the 2015s and will be the first vintage completely made in the new cellar. They offer broad, sumptuous profiles, yet with no loss of purity or precision.
About the producer
L’Aventure is one of the leading wine estates in Paso Robles, California. It was founded by Stephan Asseo and his wife Beatrice who left their native France in 1997 in search of a place to make wine without the restrictions of France’s appellation system.