Strange alcoholic, burnt rubber nose laying on flaccid vegetal and wilted fruit. This is bottle number 3 or 4 from a 6-pack that’s been just all OVER the place in terms of quality and composure. Bottle number 1 was GONE–beyond gone–bottle number 2 was moderately enjoyable with asterisks, this one somewhere between “Can I drink this?” and “Here is South France just doing its thang.” A quite awkward *thang*, I might add. Additional air just accentuates the dull cardboard and sharp toasted chemical.
Tasting it grants a fairly predictable set of nuances: dry, worn fruit over-ridden with alcohol and remnants of spice and briar. To call this wine “lifeless” would be an insult to the deceased, and unlike last week’s version which had polished smoothly SOOOOO far down into lifelessness as to be rather blissful and romantic, this thing has stooped to those regions with buck-teeth and bowed legs and a complete inability to soothe feathers. It’s also less than a decade old: a giant FAIL to all involved. Perfect cork, tiny sediment, rather dark ruby-purple in the glass, everything points to this just being another case of France-Sud being dumb. Finish probably the most redeeming portion of the wine, where it goes crisp grainy acid over fruit feeling 20 years old. There might even be a hint of steely tannin in there. Whatever… I don’t care. Too little/too late.
2016 GERARD BERTRAND ‘Grand Terroir’ SY/MV/GR Cotes du Roussillon Les Aspres, Pyrenees France 14.0
Stephen McConnell 