This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
Sonoma County blend achieves perfect score once again
California’s Vérité Bordeaux blend has been awarded a perfect Parker score for two consecutive vintages.
The wine, made by Frenchman Pierre Seillan, comes from Alexander Valley in Sonoma County and is the only label from this AVA to achieve the full 100 points.
The 2007 vintage of the Vérité blend, called La Joie, received a perfect score last year, while this month it was Le Desir which gained 100 points.
La Joie is a more Medoc-like blend, dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, while Le Desir is closer to St Emilion in style, with more Cabernet Franc and Merlot.
Speaking to the drinks business, Seillon said: “Hopefully the world will discover that Sonoma County is one of the best places in the world for Bordeaux grapes.”
Seillon was enlisted by Jess Jackson 13 years ago to start up Vérité after a chance meeting with the vinous entrepreneur.
The first vintage was the particularly wet harvest of 1998 and the wine suffered “devastating” reviews by journalists, according to Seillan.
As a result, Vérité decided to keep the ’98 vintage “and we are very pleased we did”, because, as Seillan told db, “it is a way of showing that Californian wine can age – despite the difficult vintage – and you will see the elegance and ageability of Sonoma.”
The 12-year-old wine is currently on the wine list at the UK’s Vineyard at Stockcross.
Seillan is also the winemaker at Château Lassègue Saint-Emilion and Tenuta di Arceno in Tuscany, which, with Vérité, forms Jackson’s Vigneron Collection.
Patrick Schmitt, 24.03.2011