Hospice du Rhone 2009
Talk about a whirlwind trip… Traci and I headed out from Denver late Friday evening and arrived at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) around 11PM or so… did the drive up to Paso Robles for the Hospice du Rhone grand tasting the next morning… tasted, tasted and then tasted some more… till around 8PM… tons of fantastic juice and the quality coming out of this region is impressive and teeth staining is an understatement. The look of horror from Traci when I smiled at her had me digging a tooth brush out of the car prior to dinner… We then high tailed it back to LA that evening and caught the 8AM flight out on Sunday… When we walked in the door on Sunday, the couch never looked so good!
I’ll have notes up later this week but a couple high level thoughts…
The number of producers participating in this event is amazing and the 3 hours allotted to the tasting is just not enough time to do everyone justice. More than once I felt guilty while walking past a producer on my way to taste someone else’s wine. I’m already planning another trip over the next month or so to try and do this region justice… This event was also highly slanted to the local producers with very few European wines being poured and it would be nice to see more of a mix of producers.
As to the wines, some standouts include 2007 Paul Lato Syrah Cinematique Larner Vineyard. Smooth, rich and beautifully lush, this was the bottle I grabbed for the barbecue to finish the evening. Both the 2007 Saxum Bone Rock & 2007 Saxum Broken Stones were fantastic with the Broken Stones showing a smidge denser fruit and the Bone Rock being more bright and floral. Bradley Brown of Big Basin continues to produce fantastic, dense and structured Syrahs and his 2006 and 2007 Rattlesnake Rock Syrah showed serious fruit and depth paired with the cut and edge that a lot of big, full throttle wines can lack. Torbreck was pouring their full lineup and the ’05 RunRig, ’06 Pict and ’06 Les Amis were all knockouts…
Other notable wines… ’05 Guigal d’Ampuis, 1997 Sean Thackrey Orion, the full Core lineup by Dave Corey, Beckman, Stolpman, Jonata, Epiphany, Denner, Tablas Creek and some stellar wines by Larry Schaffer of Tercero wines…
I opted to spend more time with individual wines and taste less but there’s only so much you can do in a setting like this.
Regrets… I was in Cali and missed the In-n-Out burger… what the hell was I thinking….
Full tasting notes can be found HERE.