Score: 90+/100
This Cru Bourgeois wine from the Médoc sub-region of Bordeaux is a blend of 70% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Petit Verdot.
Grapes were sourced from a 52ha vineyard (128 acres) at a pretty far North end of the Médoc peninsula, on a clayey-chalky brows soils dating from the quaternary era. The vines are 35 years old on average, planted at a high density between 6,500 and 10,000 plants per hectare.
Grapes are mostly handpicked and sorted partly manually in the cellar and with optical sorting table.
After fermentation, the wine was aged for 18 months some in tank and the rest in oak wine barrels (95% French oak and 5% American).
See Château Rollan de By in Video:
Processing Grapes ? ?? in #Bordeaux
Work of Precision and Patience ?
To make the Best possible #Wine ?@RollanDeBy ???#winelover #travel pic.twitter.com/oDWFljOOIe— Julien Miquel #Wine (@JMiquelWine) September 25, 2017
Tasting Notes
This Cru Bourgeois wine from the Médoc sub-region of Bordeaux comes in a pretty dark red color. Clearly a dark red to the core, and an intense red with both orange and purple hues to the rim. Small signs of evolution, but still looking intense and youthful for a 5-year-old wine.
The nose though, feels mature and harmonious, like a good Bordeaux wine with enough age for all the aromatic component to have come together and make a lot of sense altogether.
There’s plenty of red berry fruit characters, ripe blackberry and dark strawberry. The distinctive black cherry component from the Merlot grape (furaneol for the experts) is very clear as well.
But the wine’s aromatic profile doesn’t stop at fruity notes, far from it. A wealth of black pepper, plenty of lifted sweet spices, nutmeg and clove, a heap of well-integrated vanilla and caramel from the oak, and hints of burnt-wood smokiness, like woodfire hashes so typical and enjoyable from the Medoc Cabernets.
A deep, rather complex and talkative nose with great typicity of the area. Really delightful to smell at I personally find!
From there, the palate might feel a little lighter than anticipated from just smelling the wine. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of tannins, they are quite dense. But the overall structure is more fluid than the intensity of flavors and aromas suggests.
This is indeed a wine packed full of powerful flavors, dark cocoa, coffee, wood ashes and smoke again, vanilla and caramel, blackberry jam and much more. Even floral touches of violet. A very wide spectrum of sensations coming out.
Such an open-book of a wine. It seems to hide nothing, and leave it all entirely for you to enjoy.
Overall
Really delightful of a Medoc wine this is.
Typical, concentrated, complex and layered, yet not heavy or too dense of a Bordeaux wine. Of course, we love more concentrated, smoother and finer textured examples as well. But in a way, for more instant enjoyment and appreciation of a relatively young vintage for Bordeaux, this 2012 Rollan de by is an absolute winner delivering both the authenticity of the fruit it was made from AND the complexity and depth you expect from the style.
Dry, fruity, savory, spicy, tannic with some grip, it’s all in there for an extremely food-friendly Bordeaux wine that will sustain pairing with the tastiest foods, powerful stews, smelly cheeses, refined meat dishes and whatever hearty plates you might want to throw at it.
Enjoy 🙂
More Information on the winery’s website domaines-rollandeby.com
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