1995 Remiller “Montlys” Côte-Rôtie

The Montlys vineyard is in the northern part of the appellation, between the towns of St-Cyr and Verenay. Exiting the Autoroute from Lyon, these are the first impressively steep hillsides you see. The ’95 Remiller Montlys is an exemplar of the vintage- impressively structured, deep in fruit, and having relatively high acidity (on the order of some of the better ’93 Burgs). Our bottle was pretty sulfury when first opened, but after 30 minutes or so, the blueberry and violets took over. Plenty of smoky complexity still lies partially buried under the deep fruit. The vines at this estate are still relatively young (I think about 10 years old), but obviously there’s been some real care in the vineyard and real respect for the flavor of the grape. Brettophobes will not find much to complain about here- it’s pretty clean. I’ll bet this will go 10 years, at least.

SY (7/99)