Red wine. Côte-Rôtie, Northern Rhône, France. Sustainable. 100% Syrah. "The Côte-Rôtie 'les Rochains' from Domaine Bonnefond is from the family’s first parcel of vines, as they bought their one hectare in this superbly-placed vineyard back in the 1955. The vines’ age ranges from forty-five to seventy-five years of age and the brothers raise this wine in twenty-five percent new oak, with the remainder of the casks one wine barrels. The 2014 version is outstanding, offering up a gently oaky and quite smoky bouquet of black raspberries, dark soil tones, a bit of roasted venison, black olive, raw cocoa, nutskin and a very discreet framing of new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and a bit more reserved in profile than the Côte Rozier out of the blocks, with a fine core, good soil tones, ripe tannins and a long, youthful and beautifully balanced finish. This is going to be superb, and though it is certainly approachable today, it really deserves at least six or seven years in the cellar to fully absorb its touch of new wood and start to show its secondary layers of complexity. High class juice." — 93 Points, John Gilman, View From The Cellar #69 (May/June 2017)