Domaine de la Jaufrette
Vacqueyras
2001
Current price: about $16
Lying back once again into the Rhône’s liquid embrace.
This wine is so inky black it’s nearly opaque, with a nose redolent of black pepper, sage, anise, clove, and lavender. There’s fruit inside, but it’s veiled, yielding slowly as the wine warms in my mouth. I find black cherry there, but also fig, blackberry, and black currant. It has a long, drying finish, the fruit and spice and herbs trailing into the distance, thinning.
It’s a relief to experience a wine that relies, as this one does, on savoriness, on variegated complexity and nuance for its impact. It does not say, simply, fruit. It doesn’t say alcohol and tannin. It’s a wine that speaks in full sentences, plays to the palate’s intelligence, at last.
