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  • September 23, 2014
  • Château Rayas 1995

  • by Lars Carlberg

rayasA couple weeks ago, a few friends and I got together to open some of my last remaining bottles that I had stored in various cellars in and around Trier over the years. These were special purchases upon release mainly from importers based in Luxembourg, as well as at the cellar door. Because my flat in an old building, on the edge of the pedestrian zone, doesn’t have a proper cellar for storing wine, I had my stash of bottles recently moved from a site in Trier to Immich-Batterieberg in Enkirch, where we had the tasting.

On this night, I decided to open several Rhône wines from 1995, a classic vintage that was later overshadowed by the much-hyped 1998 and the string of vintages (ignoring 2002) that followed.

Back in 1997, I had waited over half a year in limbo for work papers from Luxembourg and promised myself that I’d finally start cellaring wines as soon as I knew I had a steady income and some sense of perspective. This held up only for a few years, before jumping at the opportunity to work at Christie’s in NYC, with many ups and downs to follow, including times spent back home in Texas far away from my wines. And yet I always somehow returned and scraped by, and the 1995 vintage remained the cornerstone of my modest collection.

The first bottle I bought for laying down was Château Rayas 1995 and followed this with a number of other wines, mainly from the Rhône but also from other regions in France, where I paid visits to most of the producers. During this period, I also took, as now, regular trips to Paris, where I made my pilgrimage from Gare de l’Est to Legrand Filles et Fils, when it was still a family-owned shop. Today, I prefer Juan Sanchez’s La Dernière Goutte, but still stop by Legrand and on occasion Caves Augé.

Back to the tasting, we started the evening of 1995s with a Hermitage blanc from Domaine Jean-Louis Chave. This had wonderful poise and restraint, with a hazelnut character. It reminded me slightly of Maison Pierre Overnoy Chardonnay for its purity and breed, though we’re talking different climes, soils, grape varieties, and winemaking here. Chave’s blend of Marsanne and Roussanne is a riper, more southern wine than the Overnoy from the Jura.

Even though I wanted to take tasting notes, I decided to just sit back and enjoy the wines instead. I actually sipped on a glass of Chave blanc as I began writing this post on the following day. A good friend had insisted that I take some leftovers back home with me to finish off.

The first two flights of three reds each had been decanted. Sadly, the first bottle revealed cork, a Clape Cornas 1995—a traditional wine that I’ve drunk with great pleasure on several occasions in Paris over the last few years. Clape makes genuine Cornas. I also like Thierry Allemand’s Chaillot and Reynard bottlings. We replaced the corked Clape with a 1996 Faugères “Jadis” from Domaine Léon Barral, which has been a favorite Languedoc producer of mine, especially the standard vat-aged Faugères. Jadis has more Syrah and is cask-aged and was showing on this evening some brett on the bouquet.

The second decanter was the wine of the evening. It was later unveiled as Rayas. This had amazing silkiness, warmth, and depth of flavor—the last vintage bottled under the aegis of Jacques Reynaud. He died in 1997, and his nephew Emmanuel Reynaud has since taken over at this idiosyncratic domaine. The wines are said to have gained more consistency now. Nonetheless, Emmanuel has had to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, who had become a legend, especially after all the accolades from Robert Parker. But it was actually Jacques’s father, Louis, who first made Rayas famous among wine circles in his day.

I’ve had bottles of Pignan and Château de Fonsalette red (both 1995s) in my cache and drank Pialade and several of Emmanuel’s Château des Tours bottlings, too, but this was my first real experience drinking Rayas. I’m not counting pre-auction tastings during my stint at Christie’s or the Rhône en Seine event at George V in Paris, which Mark Williamson had invited me to several years ago. Chave’s Hermitage red followed and is another Rhône classic, which I’ve had from 1994 as well. As much as we all liked the Chave, the Rayas was just showing better on this night.

The second flight consisted of three old-school Châteauneuf-du-Papes: Le Vieux Donjon, Henri Bonneau Réserve des Célestins, and Domaine du Pégaü Cuvée Laurence. All three domaines produce their Châteauneufs from traditional field blends consisting of primarily old-vine Grenache (ca. 80%), with varying percentages of Mourvèdre, Syrah, and other grape varieties from spread-out parcels within the appellation. Fermentation is with the stems in concrete, aging in old casks. These all tasted more robust than Rayas, but each showed wonderful mineral and herbal flavors. A good portion of the 80-year-old Grenache vines of Le Vieux Donjon come from a well-situated lieu-dit, or place-name, on a stony, high plateau in the north called Le Piéd Long. Since the 1997 vintage, there has been more destemming at this address. Réserve des Célestins, which I had actually bought at Garnet Wines on Lexington Ave. back in 2000, was quite meaty and intense and comes from vines in La Crau, a well-known lieu-dit on the high plateau to the east of the village with plenty of the famous stones, called galets roulés. Célestins and Cuvée Laurence had extended aging in old demi-muids (550- to 600-liter barrels), rather than the typical larger foudres. Rayas is also made in a time-honored, low-tech fashion—i.e., crushed whole bunches, fermented in concrete vats, and aged in ancient demi-muids. It consists, however, of one-hundred percent Grenache, grown in diverse plots on sandy soils around the estate, which is hidden in the woods just northeast of the village.

The popularity of southern Rhône wines, in particular, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, has made the wines more expensive. In addition, the trend has been towards impressing certain critics with special bottlings, often from old-vine parcels. This combined with climate change has resulted in riper and headier wines. Whether in Provence (Bandol or Châteauneuf), but also in northern climes such as the Loire or even on the Mosel, waiting for phenolic ripeness in certain vintages can lead to high-alcohol levels. In the South of France, it’s become extreme with wines hovering above 15 degrees, a far cry from the low-alcohol, crisp, and delectable 2008 Morgon from Marcel Lapierre, which I had from magnum at L’Avant-Comptoir in Paris this past Monday. On the other hand, Marcel Lapierre makes in certain vintages, such as 2007, his special old-vine cuvée that has 14 percent on the label. I bought a bottle at Le Verre Volé to take back with me to Trier.

In any case, the next round included two more cult 1995s, Domaine de Trévallon (the last label before the demotion to vin de pays; owner Eloi Dürrbach, who is a Rayas fan, used his late father’s label drawings starting with the 1996 vintage) and Château de Beaucastel (the last year in the standard Châteauneuf bottle from the Fédération syndicate; the Perrins later chose their own coat-of-arms embossed on a heavier bottle), and by mistake I grabbed a bottle of 1998 rather than a 1995 Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe from the cellar. All of these were very good. At that point, we were ready for Gernot Kollmann’s home-cooked dinner, diverse French cheeses, Ulli Stein’s bootlegged schnapps, and a couple of mature, dry Mosel Rieslings, including a surprise 1992 Stein St. Aldegunder Himmelreich Kabinett halbtrocken that the wine author Joachim Krieger had on hand. ♦

This post appeared in similar form on the blog of the former Mosel Wine Merchant, February 19, 2010.