2018 Domaine René Rostaing Côte-Rôtie La Landonne

Ripe, smoke-tinged dark berries and pungent floral scents are brightened by building mineral and spice flourishes. Spicy and impressively concentrated on the palate, offering energetic blackberry and violet pastille flavors, along with exotic spice and cracked pepper nuances. Fleshes out with air while maintaining vivacity, and finishes extremely long and chewy, displaying excellent clarity, steadily mounting tannins and suave florality.

The 2018 Côte Rôtie La Landonne offers the classic meaty, mineral, and masculine style that’s the hallmark of this terroir. It’s powerful and full-bodied, with massive minerality as well as notes of bloody meat, ground pepper, and graphite. It’s another serious, concentrated, powerful 2018 that’s going to demand bottle age. This was another power-packed lineup from the Rostaing Family, and you can’t go wrong with any of these new releases. The 2017s show the sunny yet also elegant style of the vintage and have beautifully polished, ripe tannins. These wines offer pleasure even today but do your best to give bottles 4-5 years of bottle age, especially the single vineyard releases. Looking at the 2018s, these are largely in the same style yet have slightly more concentrated, structured profiles. My money is on the 2018s requiring slightly more bottle age, but I’ll report on those from bottle this time next year. In addition to the Côte Rôties, don’t miss a chance to try the Languedoc and Collines Rhodaniennes releases. Both represent terrific wines as well as value.

For the 2018 Cote Rotie la Landonne, Pierre Rostaing put together a blend from two barrels. Wow. Toast and mocha notes frame raspberries and blueberries in this medium to full-bodied offering. It's simultaneously rich, silky and concentrated. Packed with flavor and depth, it looks as if it will be approachable within a couple of years yet be capable of evolving for a couple of decades.