Walls: Côte-Rôtie 2019 in bottle

On 28 June 2019, France recorded its highest ever temperature: 45.9 ̊ C (114.6°F) in Gallargues-le-Montueux, just outside the Costières de Nîmes appellation. Further north in Côte-Rôtie the mercury didn’t reach quite so high, but it was still a season marked by extreme heat.

I was worried that the 2019 Côte-Rôties might resemble the jammy 2003s, a vintage I tend to avoid. Thankfully the vines coped much better this time around, and produced some exciting, exuberant wines – but not all. Some tipped over into excessive ripeness and high alcohol, something that has become even more apparent since bottling. So was 2019 a great year? Not exactly; but it was a year with some great wines.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the 25 top-scoring 2019 Côte-Rôtie in bottle

The growing season

It wasn’t just a hot year in the northern Rhône, it was dry too. However Côte-Rôtie wasn’t quite as parched as Cornas and Hermitage, thanks to intermittent showers in July and August.

Maxime Chapoutier, in charge of production at M Chapoutier, remembers a relatively tranquil season with little disease pressure. Benjamin Duclaux, who runs Domaine Benjamin & David Duclaux with his brother, agrees: ‘The season passed relatively calmly,’ he says. ‘We were helped by a lovely September which allowed us to harvest under beautiful sunny conditions. We started the harvest on 18 September. From then we had to harvest quickly, because the sugars were rising rapidly.’

Christophe Bonnefond of Domaine Bonnefond says that he and his brother Patrick had to adapt the way they worked in the vineyard, rising early to avoid the heat and keeping as much leaf cover as possible on the vines. They also had to work gently in the cellar. They restricted fermentation temperatures to no more than 25 ̊ C, ‘and above all no punching down, just pumping over, in order to keep fruit and freshness,’ says Christophe.

See tasting notes and scores for all 45 wines tasted

The style of the wines

The 2019 vintage is a high-octane year with huge power and impact. The quality of the wines is largely very good; although the growing conditions weren’t dramatically different from 2018, they have more vibrancy and intensity, which gives the 2019s the edge.

‘The difficulty in this kind of vintage is not to let the grapes get overripe, in order to preserve the balance,’ says Duclaux. While he produced some beautifully precise wines, others were less successful.

Most of the wines from 2019 range between 14% and 14.5%, and while some did a good job of balancing this with tannin, fruit and acidity, there are some wines that feel overly rich and potent.

Where winemakers chose their picking dates wisely, there are some seriously impressive wines. Tannins tend to be fine and plentiful; fruit is lush and ripe. Acidity can be on the low side but largely the wines have a sense of freshness and vibrancy. Of the 45 wines I tasted blind, there were no bad wines, but some had succumbed to the forceful – and not always benevolent – nature of the vintage.

See Matt Walls en primeur report for Côte-Rôtie 2019

Outstanding performers

Domaine Bonnefond’s single-vineyard wines were very impressive, and Léa Bonnefond, Christophe’s daughter, deserves to be singled out for particular praise: her first vintage was among the best in the line-up. Clearly a talent to watch.

M Chapoutier’s three cuvées were all very strong, as were those from Domaine du Monteillet and Pierre Jean Villa. It’s no coincidence that most of their holdings are on brune soils – generally speaking, vines grown on heavier schist soils produced more balanced wines in 2019 than those on free-draining blonde gneiss.

This was evidenced by E Guigal’s ‘La-Las’. La Landonne and La Turque were both stunning, but La Mouline (on blonde soils), though attractively aromatic in 2019, doesn’t have the same depth.

Two producers that seemed to buck this trend were Domaine Benjamin & David Duclaux and Domaine Georges Vernay. Though their holdings are largely towards the south of the appellation on gneiss and granite, they both made compelling wines in 2019.

Drink or hold?

Just under half the wines I tasted can be enjoyed straight away, delicious already thanks to their plump, ripe fruits and smooth tannins. It’s worth taking note of the drinking windows however, as some of the wines are more robust and will benefit from longer in bottle before opening. However it doesn’t strike me as the kind of vintage that will suffer from a closed period, unlike the 2015s.

Most will age well on their richness and concentration; 2019 will be a long-lived vintage. That said, those with high alcohols are likely to show better while they still have youthful fruit and juicy tannin, and this is reflected in the drinking window.

Fans of powerful Côte-Rôties will find a lot to enjoy in 2019. Those who prefer a more classic style might be better off choosing 2020. Me? I’m buying both.

Matt Walls’ top Côte-Rôtie 2019 wines to try

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