2017 St Joseph Les Royes
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Tasting notes
Deep, vivid ruby. Powerful black and blue fruit, violet, olive and allspice aromas, along with smoky mineral and cracked pepper flourishes. Juicy and nicely concentrated, offering bitter cherry, cassis, floral pastille and spicecake flavors that become livelier as the wine opens up. Shows fine definition and spicy lift on a long, smooth finish framed by fine-grained, well-knit tannins. The Les Royes vineyard is a steep slope behind the Courbis winery in Châteaubourg, on a combination of granite, clay and limestone soils. The limestone segment is partly planted to Marsanne for the Les Royes Blanc bottling. One-third new oak.
Critic scores
Average Score
Richard Hemming MW, jancisrobinson.com
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
Aged in 20% new oak, the 2017 Saint Joseph Les Royes is just a bit plusher and more concentrated than the regular Saint Joseph. Of course, it adds hints of pencil shavings and baking spices to the mix of ripe cherries and black olives as well. Medium to full-bodied, it's velvety textured on the palate and finish, where it picks up hints of almond paste and mouthwatering fruit.
Inky colored, with beautiful graphite, white pepper, iron, and crushed rocks notions, the 2017 Saint Joseph Les Royes offers more blue fruits as well as minerality than the Domaine cuvée. With medium to full-bodied richness, present yet polished tannins, flawless balance, and a great finish, it's a head-turner and comes close to matching the sensational 2015. Give bottles 3-4 years and enjoy over the following decade. This release comes from a parcel in the southern part of the Saint Joseph appellation and is all destemmed and aged 16-18 months in one-third earth on new, once-, and twice-used barrels. The Courbis brothers continue to keep this estate near the top of the hierarchy in the Northern Rhône, and they’ve made brilliant wines in 2017 and 2018. In general, the style here is quasi-modern and the wines are mostly destemmed and brought up in varying amounts of new French oak. Some of the top single vineyards are brought up in 100% new barrels. Nevertheless, these wines never lose their sense of place and are pure, beautiful expressions of the individual parcels.
Glass-staining ruby. Seductively perfumed aromas of dark berry liqueur, olive and candied flowers, along with a slowly emerging mineral note. Offers deeply pitched blueberry, bitter cherry and floral pastille flavors. A spicy nuance builds slowly with air. Weighty but also quite lively on the mineral-driven finish, showing excellent clarity and fine-grained tannins that sneak in late. (20% new oak)