Wine of the Week: Les Trois Couronnes Cotes-du-Rhone
Wine: Les Trois Couronnes Cotes-du-Rhone
Grapes: Grenache (80 percent), syrah (20 percent)
Region: Southern Rhone Valley, France
Vintage: 2010
Price: $9.99 for 1.5 liters
Availability: Lee’s Discount Liquor
In the glass: Les Trois Couronnes is a deep garnet-red color with an opaque core going out into a slightly red-tinged rim definition with high viscosity.
On the nose: The wine bursts forth with an aromatic mix of assorted blackberry juices, crushed red plums, black cherries, phenolics, spice components, juniper bush, oregano, herbs de Provence and references of wood and aniseed with melted black licorice and earthy minerals underlying.
On the palate: There is tremendous richness upfront on the palate with lots of attractive crushed black fruits, especially plums, loganberries, elderberry fruit and sloe fruit, then comes spiced morello cherry juice, black tea, fig stew and licorice root.
All this is going into the well-balanced midpalate, which shows this wine’s serious structure with smooth tannins and tons of stewed fruit character.
The finish is long and lingers on the palate for a good 25-plus seconds with yet more herbs, pepper and cherry-infused gunpowder tea.
Odds and ends: This stellar beginning to the new year yielded an almost-too-good-to-be-true revelation.
This tremendous Les Trois Couronnes Cotes-du-Rhone wine is less than $10 per magnum and comes from one of the rock-star vintages of recent memory.
There’s so much bang for the buck that it may be a while before I can top this find.
The “unfortunate” downside is that you’ll have to drink a whole lot more wine from this large bottle or share it with friends. I figured you wouldn’t mind.
The 2010 vintage was fabulous in Southern Rhone where this wine comes from and as top critic Robert Parker said in his Wine Advocate: “The greatness of the 2010 vintage has been widely recognized throughout the world, so the wines are being gobbled up at almost unprecedented rapidity.” This is your chance. Try this wine with a nice bison Bolognese over pasta. Drink it now through 2020.
Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.
