2009 Chateau de Saint Cosme Cote Rotie, Rhone, France
| Critic | Score |
| Wine Spectator | 93/100 |
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Cote Rotie wine region
Cote Rotie is a highly respected and increasingly prestigious red wine appellation in the northern Rhone valley in France. One of the reasons it is of particular interest to today's wine consumer is that, while the land into which it can spread is extremely limited, the increase in demand for the wines has led to rises in quality rather than quantity. The modern Cote Rotie wine producers have turned to experimentation and high quality to make the most of the space available to them.
Cote Rotie is the furthest north of the Rhone appellations, and is situated just to the south of Vienne, the town at the very top of the Rhone valley and home to many successful wine producers. The parishes of Ampuis, Saint-Cyr-sur-le-Rhone and Tupin-et-Semons are the only three that may claim the appellation, and only particular plots of land within those towns are legally approved as suitable for producing Cote Rotie wines. The steep hillsides (cotes) of the area rise up sharply above Ampuis, which is located on an alluvial plateau by the Rhone river. There are about 10 ridges running north-south, each no more than 2000ft (600m) across and each with a corresponding tree-lined valley. The ridges reach heights of 1150 ft (330m) within a mile of the river banks, bringing the benefits of increased altitude as well as increased exposure to sunlight.
Cote Rotie wines are renowned for being elegant and finely structured, with complex aromas typical of the local more ... -
Rhone wine region
The Rhone valley is a key wine-producing region in the south-east of France. It follows the north–south course of the Rhone river for almost 150 miles (240km) as it flows from Lyon to its end point at the Mediterranean sea.
The length of the valley means that Rhone wines are the product of a wide variety of soil types and mesoclimates. The region's wine-producing areas cover such a distance that there is a widely accepted division between its northern and southern parts. Rather neatly, they are separated by a 25-mile (40-km) gap between the towns of Valance and Montelimar, in which almost no vines are grown.This division is reflected not only in geography and preferred grape varieties, but also in the quality and quantity of wines produced. The smaller, more quality-driven northern section focuses almost entirely on Syrah for red wines and Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne for whites, while the larger and more prolific south employs a much longer list of varieties. The most notable of these are the red varieties Grenache and Mourvedre, which are combined with Syrah to produce the 'GSM' blend so characteristic of the southern Rhone. While the granite-blessed slopes of the north are paired with a more ...
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Syrah is a dark-skinned red wine grape whose origins have popularly debated but whose spiritual home is unquestionably the northern Rhone Valley in the east of France. In Australia the variety is known as Shiraz, the name of a town in Persia (modern day Iran) from which the variety was long thought to have originally come.
One of the world's most diverse and successful grape varieties, Syrah has now made its presence felt in the vineyards and wines of countries as diverse as France, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, Slovenia, the USA, Chile, Argentina, South Africa and Australia (as Shiraz). It now ranks among the most widely planted wine grape varieties in the world, and consumer demand for Syrah and Shiraz wines shows little sign of abating in the early 21st century.
Among the world's most famous Syrah wines are the peppery, earthy reds of the northern Rhone, specifically of the Cote-Rotie, Hermitage and Saint-Joseph appellations. While Hermitage has been held in high regard for many centuries, the 'roasted slopes' of the Cote Rotie have emerged as a source of powerhouse Syrah only towards the end of the 20th century. Saint-Joseph, in response to the increasing demand for Rhone Syrah, went through various geographical expansions in the 1970s, some of which have proved less than judicious, meaning that the appellation's output of Syrah is less reliable than that of its smaller neighbors.
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