Clos Rougeard at Noble Rot

by Wine Owners

Posted on 2016-04-19

---

This extraordinary vertical of Clos Rougeard (1976-2010) was held at Noble Rot, courtesy of Jordi Orriols-Gill of Rare Wine Vintages. There were 23 wines served in total, accompanied by an excellent menu that played a fine supporting role to the wines.

Clos Rougeard Saumur Blanc Brézé	1993	Fresh, fruited, green fig nose, faint oxidative hints, bright attack yet waxy textured, threaded acidity and exceptionally persistent. Super long. Ridiculously mouthwatering. Desert Island stuff, like a tuning fork in its intensity.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Blanc Brézé	2000	Perfume and camphor nose, rose petals, a dry vermouth-like spirity-ness. Herbal and the freshness builds with almost the same supreme length as 1993
Clos Rougeard Saumur Blanc Brézé	2005	Quince nose. Sandalwood and white flowers. Enormous intensity, primary, coiled. Give it 10 years
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1976	Corky nose, damp cardboard, metallic palate at first. Jordi reckoned this wasn't corked. He was right, after an hour it had cleaned up, Still, the second bottle for the other table had creamy fruit, and was lovely. The only below par bottle of the night as it turned out on our table - so we can count ourselves lucky.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1985	Dusty nose but this has energy and a progression that is proper. Lovely finish. Overall a highly strung wine. Trying hard to present a beautiful public face but the age-lines are there. On its downward descent.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1986	Animal, leathery nose, bright, mouthwatering a little dry in the mid palate, over the other side of its plateau. Lovely mouthwatering finish nonetheless. I hour later just a touch spirity but a little more integrated and a touch of alcohol on the finish now the fruit is fading. Past its best.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1988	Great herbal nose, with an anis background and a touch of game. Ah, this is more like it. Lovely density and progression, fantastic energy and enormous length. This has lovely poise.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	1989	Darkly perfumed nose, a touch of cedar, warm entry, licorice and a little spice, and the spice is tangible too with a heady mid-palate. Very satisfying. Lifted, blackcurrant leaf finish. Long
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	1990	Red fruits and cedar nose, enormous energy and brilliant finish. Great length and more of an expression of Bordeaux that any other of the night thus far.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1993	Pure nose, heady and spiced, redcurrenty undercurrent. Velvety palate, sweet, a little taste of heaven. Supremely integrated with an elegantly veined length.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1994	Extremely pure nose of licorice and peppercorn, so very gently sweet and svelte, so silken and smooth. The perfect sweetness. Strawberries on the finish and then a mouthwatering pithy finale.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	1995	Damp wool and perfumed nose. Sheep dipped in Joy par Jean Patou! On the palate the wine delivers a knock out punch. Not sweet, not dry. Aromatic. Sappy (in the best sense of the word) fresh finish. Such shape to the wine. Haute Couture, shaped like an hourglass.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1995	Nose of pure seduction. Silky and cedary, liquory texture thanks to melted tannins. Fully resolved. Rose infused mid-palate, intensity without weight, vibrant, heady finish
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	1996	Crystalline nose. Alluring organic nose like sleeping next to someone. Burgundian weight. Dark flashes of fruit, interspersed with brighter notes, like shafts of light. Vibrant and heady length. Tonight's expression of Burgundy and what an expression! Warm finish but the warmth does not come from alcohol. Visceral. Perfection. Sherbetty profile on the finish. This went so well with the gorgeous lamb served by the Noble Rot team.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	1999	Delicate nose, fabulous aromatics, striking palate. Delightful fruitiness and exuberance with the prickliness of acidity on the finish.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	2000	Wood box nose, whiff of varnish, deep warm attack. Huge. Needs a bit more time.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	2002	Yeasty, bready nose, tight entry, citrus fruit, grapefruit, big flavours, boisterous wine. Lovely dry finish. Lots of concentration. Young. Will be one for the future. Tremendous potential.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	2005	Spiced nose, oranges and mulberries. The warmth of Bourg, liquory texture, like a dry version of Cointreau. The orange in there continues into the finish.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	2007	Creamy nose, preserved lemons and white pepper, like a lemon posset - creamy attack, sticky ripe fruit, yet sherbetty on the mid palate. Very, very long.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Le Bourg'	2008	Potential writ large. Enormous concentration. Pithy, really pithy. Rapier like focus. All about the future. It's impossible to pin down, with at first a dark finish, then a bright finish. Amazing undercurrent of intense fruit.
Clos Rougeard Saumur Saumur-Champigny 'Les Poyeux'	2010	Round, ripe fruit. Fruity and yeasty. Intense fruit, on the terrific attack. Sticky lip-smacking fruit, fresh and plenty of potential. Great focus, like a corsetted wine. Extraordinary length

---

Should all vintage charts look like this?

by Wine Owners

Posted on 2015-02-06

---

Hats off to Bill Nanson for creating an all-encapsulating system for showing the quality of a vintage with an emphasis on its range and its highs and lows.
This pure genius and is a great model for other regions where fragmentation and micro-climate variability exerts a key influence.

---

Making the most of your wine portfolio management.

by Wine Owners

Posted on 2013-10-30

---

One of the pitfalls of collecting is knowing when to pull a case out of storage, and making sure that older stocks don’t linger unappreciated until past their prime. Your Wine Owners Portfolio allows you to sort wines by maturity, so you can decide what to bring out of storage for drinking, what to keep, and what you might wish to sell on. The drinking dates are backed up by over 100,000 reviews, so you can keep up to date with professional appraisals of your wines.

Bordeaux
In younger vintages, it’s about possible to start drinking 2001, 2002, & 2004. 2001 and 2004 have a reasonable amount in common, being both classically styled wines without the opulence or longevity of 2000 and 2005. Useful in this case to refer back to Jancis Robonson’s FT article (2 Apr 2011), which sets out the case for 2001 as a useful ‘forgotten’ vintage. 2001 Chateau Grand Puy Lacoste Pauillac 5eme Cru Classe AOC, rated highly in that article and with a market price of £423 seems like a particular steal, perhaps because Robert Parker’s rating, so often a market driver for Bordeaux prices, is quite low. The vast majority of the 2005s on the left bank are still developing, certainly so at First and Second Growth level.
Vintages from the mid-nineties are subject to growing demand, as these wines enter their prime drinking window. 95s and 96s in particular are beginning to turn serious – try Chateau Calon-Segur St Estephe 3eme Cru Classe AOC 1995 for a well priced example. For those who don’t have a taste for the very tertiary, Bordeaux from the good mid-eighties vintages should be starting to get finished up now. Most 85’s, and certainly 86’s and 88’s, except at the very top level are getting close to the beginning of decline, and are better off on the table now than spending another few years in the cellar.

Burgundy
Aged Burgundy is notoriously difficult to source, but for those who already have it in their cellars, drinking dates are heavily vintage dependent. Collectors with 2007s in the the cellar, below Grand Cru level, can start to look at those wines now, with many showing an extremely fresh and vibrant character now, perfect for those who like an early drinking, energetic style. Domaine Comte Georges de Vogue Chambolle Musigny Premier Cru AOC 2007
Older vintages, if you can find them, that are beginning to show well include 2002, and 1999: try Hospices de Beaune Corton Cuvee Charlotte Dumay Grand Cru AOC 1999 as an example of a Corton that should be drinking superbly now.

Champagne
Plenty of merchants and supermarkets will be gearing up for Christmas offers around Champagne in the next month, but the best way to be prepared is to start a year in advance. Most NV bottlings will seriously benefit from a further year in the cellar, so if you have the space to keep roughly 12 months stock of champagne and top up as you go, that’s the best way to make sure you’re drinking the wine at its peak.
At vintage and prestige cuvee level, 1996 and 1999 wines are both beginning to come into their own, with Moet & Chandon Dom Perignon Champagne 1999 showing particularly well recently.
With over 100,000 reviews available for more than 145,000 fine wines, we think Wine Owners offers a great solution to keeping track of your wines with over £37,000,000 of stock under management.

---