Score: 94+/100
This wine by Consolation, made by Mas Cristine in the Southern part of Roussillon, in the extreme South of France, is made from 100% Carignan grapes sourced from old vines on a single vineyard called St Jean.
Destemmed and crushed into tank for foot treading. It was fermented in a small stainless-steel tank before being pressed into 400-liltre wine barrels for one year’s ageing.
Tasting Notes
This Languedoc-Roussillon Carignan wine comes in a very dark and intense red color, virtually black to the core, dark red to the rim, and throwing delicate purple hues there. Looking Young!
The nose is also rich and dense, intensely smoky and meaty.
Wood smoke and a bit of tar marry delicately some cured meat aromas. Somewhat of a subtle smoked meat is the overall impression you get at smelling it. Yet, there is a wealth black pepper as well, that complement the savory side of the aromatic profile well, spicing things up.
Add serious and profound ripe blackberry notes, and you get an intriguing, charming nose. Immensely deep it is to smell! Smelling young, and a bit tight, it does too!
But you just want to dig in and taste it to find out what this restrained nose of what feels like an undeveloped but strongly-built wine is hiding. So, let’s do this!
The palate first strikes, and somewhat surprises, with the smoothness of its texture.
It’s soft and silky at first, feeling like a cushion on your tongue, like a cloud of dense but super-fine tannins. You do feel the solid body, and the juicy acidity, that underline flavors of fresh raspberry and salivating blackberries. It feels big, dense and concentrated, yet light as the overall impression, with sweet and savory notes combined. Complete, and balanced.
All of this is before the wine transforms, as you’re tasting, from the mid-palate on, into an enormous burst of stunningly powerful flavors throwing sweet spices, white pepper, licorice, cinnamon, strawberry jam, vanilla, coffee, nutmeg and chocolate, prune liqueur and much more at your senses.
The civilized kid appearance given by the first impression, seems to transform into a hysteric body-builder of a monster, frantically throwing sensations and flavors at your palate. Not for the feint-hearted. But in fact, it eventually feels much more ordered and balanced all in all that the image I might be depicting here.
Overall
A huge beast of a wine this really is!
Intense and very concentrated red berry fruit characters play with somewhat-salty juiciness, tight silky tannins, solid acidity, a wealth of delicate spices, as well as yummy and well-integrated oaky notes.
A wine to experience this absolutely is…
Enjoy 🙂
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