Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe La Crau, 2003.

[Dave Dewhurst]

Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe La Crau, Chateauneuf du Pape, Southern Rhone, France, 2003.

This one was not planned originally for the "Grenachy Weekend" but cropped up in a tasting I popped into on Saturday afternoon. Well, having not been overly keen on the style of the two 2003 Spanish examples I posted, I was truly out of luck with things grenachy as this was almost undrinkable! Granted very very young and again the hot vintage, so I have no idea how this will turn out in many years time!

Slightly confected nose here with cherry and brambles along with some plum. Absolutely massive in the mouth, excruciatingly rich grenachy plums, almost cough syrupy in intensity and texture with upfront drying tannins. Fruit is extraordinarily ripe and the alcohol is searing - very difficult to like this now! Nothing like previous CdP's I have had (admittedly not many), maybe age, maybe vintage, maybe inexperience, possibly all three!!

Cheers

Dave

[DaveL]

Interestingly I thought this was the wine of the La Vigna tasting, at least for my palate. I found a lifted nose with spice, cherries and blood plums. The palate was rich and mouthfilling with a midpalate that really stood out for me in the face of the Barolo and the Argiano wines. I would find it interesting to look at the wine again by itself to see how many of my perceptions were coming from the wine itself and how many were from the line up I tasted it in. In my scribbled notes I mentioned "spiced pork", not so much as a taste descriptor but because I could totally go this wine with a whole pork fillet rolled in crushed star annise and hoi sin sauce. To me pork usually makes me crave a rich full bodied wine and that's what I found here.

I also found the tannins gentle and unobtrusive, quite amazing how two people can find such different characters in the exact same wine! Fortunately there's more than enough wine for all of us

[Dave Dewhurst]

Ah Dave, rustled I am . Indeed the La Vigna tasting. I agree totally different palates etc and I have very little experience wih such young CdP's. I found very similar characteristics in the two Spanish wines I posted on from the same year and maybe this hot vintage style is just not suited to my palate. I will say that one of the Spanish ones (the Coto de Hayas) was a far better wine today after an overnight decant and perhaps had the Vieux Télégraphe been decanted and aired overnight, then maybe I might have gone for it more. However, I have a very savoury palate and I found the fruit here just too rich and sweet with a slightly candied nose.

I guess to give more of an indication where my palate lay with that tasting, I preferred the Potensac 00, the Prunotto Barbera D'Alba 03 and the Gaja Barolo Gromis 00. Agreed you could be on to summat with the line up as well as the VT was definitely the real big swamp monster at the end!!

As you say, a very interesting each to their own!!

Cheers

Dave

[MG]

The Vieux Telegraphe popped up at a CdP tasting last night and was my pick of the whole evening. I think the guys at Europa (who hosted the tasting) decant the wines a couple of hours prior to letting everyone loose on them, so maybe it had opened up a bit more than Dave D's bottle. I'm still quite new to wine and have a lot to learn about CdP, so I have no idea how close it comes to what you'd expect from a southern Rhone, but it struck me as a wine that I'd love to be able to revisit another 10 or so years down the road.

I do agree that it is pretty up-front at the moment, but the fact that it was poured into my glass straight after a 2003 Vielle Julienne that weighed in at 15.5% probably tricked my palate into thinking that the Telegraphe was softer than it actually was!