Sunday, March 03, 2013

2007 Guigal GIGONDAS (Southern Rhone, France)

Since I started blogging many years ago, I've come to appreciate Guigal's labels:  very simple; no need to type out vineyard names, special cuvee names, or "vieilles vignes."

This wine is very good, if not rising to the level of his exceptional 2005 Gigondas, which still stands as the best Gigondas I've ever drunk.

Not-quite-fully-saturated black ruby color.  Sultry nose of ripe plums, blackberries, iodiney/molten stony minerals and a hint of warmed sandstone and fruitcake.  Mouthfilling, with mellow but intense, low-toned flavors of blackberry syrup and liquid minerality, along with a dark gravelly earthiness.  Full-bodied, with lots of fairly soft tannin leaving the mouth a little puckery in the finish.  This is drinking well now but will improve over the next 2-3 years (maybe a little more).  Very classically structured.  B+/A-.  Was $17.99 from Wine Exchange in L.A., making it a good value.


2 comments:

Angelo said...

Seems like a terrific price for that. If I remember correctly, that sells up here in the mid to high twentys

Tom Casagrande said...

But I had to pay about 25% of the value of the mixed case I got for shipping (Winex never does free shipping), so it ended up netting out at around $23 or $24.