Domaine Rostaing Domaine Rostaing Côte-Rôtie La Landonne 2018 750ml

The 2018 Côte Rôtie La Landonne offers the classic meaty, mineral, and masculine style that’s the hallmark of this terroir. It’s powerful and full-bodied, with massive minerality as well as notes of bloody meat, ground pepper, and graphite. It’s another serious, concentrated, powerful 2018 that’s going to demand bottle age.

For the 2018 Cote Rotie la Landonne, Pierre Rostaing put together a blend from two barrels. Wow. Toast and mocha notes frame raspberries and blueberries in this medium to full-bodied offering. It’s simultaneously rich, silky and concentrated. Packed with flavor and depth, it looks as if it will be approachable within a couple of years yet be capable of evolving for a couple of decades.

Ripe, smoke-tinged dark berries and pungent floral scents are brightened by building mineral and spice flourishes. Spicy and impressively concentrated on the palate, offering energetic blackberry and violet pastille flavors, along with exotic spice and cracked pepper nuances. Fleshes out with air while maintaining vivacity, and finishes extremely long and chewy, displaying excellent clarity, steadily mounting tannins and suave florality.

Seductive up front, with dark currant and blackberry details that have melded with licorice root, sweet bay leaf, dark olive and tar accents. The finish is grippy, but has cut and drive, thanks to an iron note and nicely embedded acidity. Best from 2023 through 2035. 800 cases made. (James Molesworth)

Inky ruby. Spice-accented blackberry, cherry preserve, pipe tobacco and licorice on the deeply perfumed nose; a sexy floral topnote gains strength as the wine opens up. Sweet, spicy and penetrating, displaying velvety texture to the ripe dark berry, cherry and fruitcake flavors. Shows superb clarity and finishes smoky and impressively long, with mounting tannins and a lingering suggestion of candied violet.

This has an old-school persona, with a dusty sandalwood and cedar frame around a mix of mulled plum and black cherry fruit, showing bay leaf, leather and savory notes. A smoldering dark earth accent runs through the finish. Best from 2022 through 2038. 800 cases made.