Few words in the vinous lexicon set sommelier hearts aflutter like “Côte-Rôtie.” These vertiginous Syrah vineyards are replete with exalted names—Rostaing, Jamet, Levet, Bénetière, Ogier, Guigal—and given the appellation’s microscopic size, it often feels there are no stones left unturned, like we’re all fighting over an ever-shrinking stock of collectibles. But a recent encounter with today’s 2019 “Prélude” set us straight on that count!
At Domaine Jocelyne and Yves Lafoy, everything that makes Côte-Rôtie special (painstaking viticulture; microscopic production; soulful interpretations of Syrah) is on full display. After a quick decant, this is a Côte-Rôtie to savor and study now, suffused as it is with iron-tinged minerality, brooding dark fruits, and black olive notes—all wrapped in a juicy, almost Burgundian frame. And like bottles from the legends listed above, it’ll begin offering a sweeping range of Syrah profundity after a few years in your cellar. Unlike those legends, however, it doesn’t come with a triple-digit price of entry!
Like all the best Côte-Rôtie addresses, the Lafoy estate is minuscule with barely five hectares of vine real estate. Since its founding in 1993 by Jocelyne and Yves, the focus of the estate has been on unadorned, honest expressions of this singular appellation. They resisted pressure in the late ’90s and early aughts to produce heavily oaked, modern wines geared toward international wine critics. Instead, for three decades now, they’ve guided their estate with a judicious touch and no-frills minimalism that’s a common thread through the region’s most coveted bottlings.
For my money, Côte-Rôtie is France’s most dramatic wine-producing landscape. It’s the sort of vertigo-inducing slope that makes you wonder how farming is even possible. The juice produced must be otherworldly to warrant viticulture this backbreaking. And it is. This is truly singular terroir, fiercely protected by its resident vignerons. Geographically, three villages reside within it (Ampuis, Saint-Cyr, and Tupin) but only specifically chosen vineyard plots above them can lay claim to the appellation. The Lafoys holdings are mostly centered around the hill known as Côte Brune, where clay-schist soils—on hills so steep, terracing must be employed to keep the vines in place—imbue the resulting wines with serious muscular tension. The Côte Brune is akin to the Gevrey-Chambertin of Côte-Rôtie: deep, powerful wines that are delicious now and will pay back as much time as you can give them in your cellar.
The “Prélude” bottling comes from a total of 2.6 hectares and is a blend of the “Truchet,” “Fongeant,” “Leyat,” and “La Brosse” lieux-dits in Côte Brune, plus a nearly 90-year-old parcel in the sandier Côte Blonde. The grapes are harvested manually and 100% de-stemmed at the winery before a 3-4-week maceration. The resulting wine then matures in French barrels, 10% new, for 20 months.
Make sure to give Lafoys’ 2019 “Prélude” a solid one-hour decant to really let it shine. Served in a large Burgundy stem at around 60 degrees, the nose is an object lesson in schist-driven Syrah purity. Fresh blackcurrants, blackberries, raspberry liqueur, black cherry fruit, and violets lead into savory notes of olive, mint, iron, and smoked meat. The palate is precise and linear, a perfect halfway point between southerly Syrah warmth and Burgundian lift and freshness, with invigorating acidity and a fine, blanketing coat of tannins. The balance between polished precision and hand-made, genuine soulfulness that defines our favorite Côte-Rôties is present in spades here. It’s delicious now, but will really begin to strut its stuff after 2-3 years in your cellar, so be sure to grab enough!
