2007 E. Guigal, Cote Rotie, La Mouline

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

The stunning 2007 Cote Rotie La Mouline boasts notes of sweet lychee nuts, licorice, black raspberries, kirsch and a floral/honeysuckle character that one associates with white wines. Full-bodied and voluptuously textured with silky tannin, this beauty is reminiscent of the 1997 and 1991 La Mouline. Enjoy it over the next 20 years. The following paragraph is taken from issue #193, but I believe it is so important to understand the Guigal philosophy that I am repeating it verbatim. “As I have written many times before, no one in the wine world is better at ‘raising’ a wine (or as the French call it elevage) than Marcel Guigal, who learned the skills from his father, Etienne. Because everyone tends to focus on vintage conditions and terroir, the importance of a wine’s elevage is often overlooked, but Guigal’s unusually long tank, foudre and small barrel aging regime for all his red wines as well as several of his whites results in an array of remarkable wines time and time again. Even the most challenging vintages, which often taste under-nourished, vegetal and thin in their first year or two of life, tend to take on concentration and character, turning out to be some of the finest wines in many of the most difficult Rhone vintages. Moreover, Guigal’s wines always taste better out of bottle than from barrel, which speaks to his honesty and integrity as well as to his brilliance in deciding how long to age a wine in wood or tank, as well as choosing the perfect moment to bottle