Cotes du Rhone `Petit Ours` Rouge, Domaine du Coulet

Note:

Deepish crimson purple.  Positively jumps out of the glass with scents of juicy blackberry, cherry and violet.  Really exuberant.  Gets a bit more ‘serious’ as it calms down and some liquorice and game notes start to come through.   Lush.  Lovely textural wine, creamy without being extracted, and walks the line between luscious sweet fruit and savoury character beautifully.  The much over used phrase ‘gobs of’ (fruit) makes me cringe…..but in this case it is the only one that will do.  Gobs of juicy black cherry flavour, overlaid with some game, a bit of bacon fat and some liquorice.   But it’s the texture that is so beguiling.  I think it’s the absence of oak and the very low sulphur that makes it so seductive.  Plush, but you don’t feel any sense of warmth. You can drink it now, but the grower (Matthieu Barret) thinks you can wait a few years.  The whole bottle went down incredibly easily, pleasurably and quickly (my wife loved it also, and she positively frowns upon Syrah).  Creamy and rounded. Yum.