Vérité La Joie Sonoma County Red Blend 2019

100 points Parker - limited                      In an historic moment, wine critic Robert Parker, Jr., of The Wine Advocate recently announced   twelve 100-point scores for Vérité’s three blends, Le Désir, La Joie and La Muse. This is the first time a Sonoma County winery has received this many perfect scores. Limited. 100 Points Jeb Dunnuck: "Tasting like a great bottle of Château Lafite, the 2017 La Joie is based largely on Cabernet Sauvignon and brought up, I suspect, in mostly new French oak. Deep ruby/purple, with a heavenly bouquet of crème de cassis, lead pencil, cedarwood, graphite, and tobacco, it hits the palate with medium to full-bodied richness, an incredible sense of elegance and purity, building tannins, and a great, great finish. This majestic, regal Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon is going to require a decade of cellaring to hit maturity (although it’s far from unapproachable today) and will see its 50th birthday in fine form. I followed this bottle for three days and it never showed a hint of oxidation. This is easily my wine of the vintage in 2017." 98+ Robert Parker: “The Cab Franc was quite spectacular in 2017. There is a bit more in the blend this year,” Pierre Seillan told me during the tasting of the 2017s with his daughter and one day successor, Helene. A blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 16% Cabernet Franc, 10% Merlot and 4% Petit Verdot, the 2017 La Joie has a very deep garnet-purple color. It opens a little closed and broody, giving glimpses of blackcurrant cordial, espresso, charcoal and black truffles to begin, before blossoming out to a whole array of preserved black and blue fruits, dusty soil, crushed rocks and iron ore scents plus a waft of roses. The medium to full-bodied palate is built like a brick house, with firm, grainy tannins and a lively backbone supporting the muscular fruit, finishing very long and mineral laced. The alcohol weighed in at just 13.9% this year (14% on the label), making for a particularly elegant but no less impactful La Joie!  Robert Parker: "I suppose the arguments against giving perfect scores far outnumber those for giving them, but after 37 years of tasting just about everything of quality that’s been produced, I believe I’m in a position to recognize truly world-class efforts that are as complete and compelling as good wine can be. And if that’s the case, then why hold back? I realize that it creates possibly unreal expectations among readers, and there is the argument that nothing really is perfect. But if a wine is as good as you think it can be made, then I have no reservations about offering accolades to those rare wines. When one considers the winemaking effort that goes into producing these cuvées of Vérité, from Bordelais Pierre Seillan, the fastidious attention to detail and the use of only the crème de la crème of fruit from some of the finest vineyards in the Jackson family empire, the results are not that surprising. All of these wines, basically, are aged in 100% new French oak, given 3-4 day cold pre-fermentation, cold macerations, treated like spoiled children during élevage, and bottled with no fining or filtration. The entire philosophy is that La Muse is the Right Bank Pomerol look-alike from Vérité, La Joie the Medoc-like clone, and Le Desir a St.-Emilion in the style of Ausone...These are legendary wines of great extract, richness and potential of longevity and complexity. No compromises are made and the credit goes certainly to the Jackson family for supporting the efforts of winemaker Pierre Seillan." Vérité produces wines without compromise, wines that reflect the terroir in which they are grown. The name Vérité comes from the French word for truth. The wines are a combination of old-world experience and new-world fruit. Vigneron Pierre Seillan, Vérité’s first and only winemaker, is a man who understands and appreciates the importance of the land. He is intimately involved in every step of the winegrowing process from bud break to bottling.

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