92+ John Gilman - View from the Cellar

"As readers may remember from last year’s Beaujolais report, Jean-Louis Dutraive is a young grower who has only recently begun producing wines from his eight hectare monopole vineyard of the Clos de la Grand Coeur in Fleurie. Amongst his stages prior to starting out in Fleurie was a season with Christophe Roumier in Chambolle-Musigny. Christophe still supplies the older Burgundy barrels that Jean-Louis uses for the elevage of much of his wine. The 2011 Fleurie is a lovely and very exotic wine, which I assume was also raised in two-thirds old Roumier barrels and one-third in old foudres- as was the case with the lovely 2010 version of this wine. The 2011 Clos de la Grand Cour is a deep and very serious wine on the nose, offering up scents of ripe cherries, pomegranate, woodsmoke, a touch of gamebird, fresh thyme, a lovely base of soil, dried violets and a bit of cedar. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and quite youthful, with a sappy core of fruit, superb soil signature, plenty of the ripe tannins of the vintage, nascent complexity and outstanding length and grip on the chewy and still quite youthful finish. There is a touch of volatile acidity here when the wine is first opened, but that blows off with a couple of minutes air. This is a very young and intense bottle of Fleurie, with far more stuffing and potential for longevity than the fine 2010 version, but this wine will demand a few years in the cellar before it really becomes approachable, as the finish is really quite tannic for a young bottle of Fleurie, with a bit of wood tannin joining the sturdy tannins of the vintage. Give this wine four or five years in the cellar- after which it should be excellent. 2016-2035."