“The decanter is your friend.”

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We love a good Côtes du Rhône. They have been our go-to everyday reds for more than two decades, consistently offering solid QPR (quality-price-ratio) that few domestic wines have been able to match, now or then.

I’m a firm believer in giving any good young Côtes du Rhône red some air. You can’t hurt it by decanting it 30 minutes before pouring, so why not? They’ll usually open up that much sooner than if glasses had been poured straight from the bottle.

This one is a perfect example. I got it at Plum Market a few months ago. It exceeds my usual $10-20 QPR range, but in this case, it’s damn well worth it. According to the Weygandt Wines site, Le Poutet is “culled from (Charvin’s) holdings just outside his Châteauneuf-du-Pape vineyards. Le Poutet is so good that it often outperforms the top bottlings of lesser Châteauneuf producers.” I would not disagree, based on what’s in this bottle.

2019 Domaine Charvin Côtes du Rhône Le Poutet, 81% Grenache, 7% Mourvèdre, 5% Carignan, 7% Syrah, 15% alc., $24.97: This is some serious Côtes du Rhône. At first, it’s all about big black fruit and lots of underbrush, but give it a little air and there’s plenty more here. Full bodied and deeply colored, it gives bunches of earthy, plummy black fruit accented with some of the aforementioned underbrush and subtle notes of leather and lavender. It’s big and chewy and structured for several more years in the cellar, so its best days are still well ahead, but it’s quite approachable now, if you just remember the following guideline.

The decanter is your friend. Find this wine

Imported by Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA

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We’ve been enjoying Domaine Sainte-Anne Côtes du Rhônes for many years, and there’s a reason I always look forward to seeing how the next vintage compares to the previous. I’ve already mentioned the excellent Sainte-Anne Côtes du Rhône Blanc in an earlier report, but their reds have been perennial favorites hereabouts. This one is a more-than-worthy addition to their fine track record of Côtes du Rhône successes.

2021 Domaine Sainte-Anne Côtes du Rhône, 13.5% alc., $13.99: Shows clean, dark color, and some earthy black fruit on the nose, made all-the-more attractive by an unmistakable whiff of violets, the signature characteristic of this wine for many vintages. In the mouth, it has good size and weight, being full-bodied and a bit dense. The fruit shows nice intensity, all dark berry, black plum, a little beet root and again, those violet overtones that keep me coming back to this wine, vintage after vintage. Like any good young red Rhône, this likes air; the more you give it, the better it shows. ( The decanter is your friend.) However, this has the structural backbone to go 3-5 years in the cellar, and I have no doubt that it will improve in that time, and perhaps beyond. Find this wine

I’ve bought this by the case in the past, and I’ll be doing so with this vintage too. The best price I’ve found so far is that listed above, at Westborn Market in Berkley. It’s yet another QPR All-Star in a long line of QPR All-Stars. My strategy would be to put these down for a few years and keep drinking the Pasquier CdR, which is still readily available and drinking beautifully right now. 

Imported by AHD Vintners, Warren, MI

Reporting from Day-twah,
Bastardo

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