2006 | Verite | Le Désir

Bright ruby-red. Black fruits, licorice and cedar on the nose. Broad and round but backward, with a distinctly medicinal reserve to the flavors of black fruits, menthol and smoke. The middle palate is currently dominated by the wine's spine and yet the very long finish is lush and sweet.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: The 2006 Le Desir, a blend of 49% Cabernet Franc, 41% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Malbec, is offering a fine balance of concentrated fruit and mature savoriness. It has a deep garnet color and singular aromas of Morello cherries, mint chocolate, coffee grounds, aniseed and black truffles. The palate is still muscular, with gently chewy tannins, fresh acidity, intense fruits and complex savory layers on the finish.

• Wine Enthusiast: Extremely tannic at the age of five years, and that astringency accentuates the dryness, making the wine austere and distant. It has a dense, complex core of blackberries, coated with immaculately fine, sweet oak. Feels important and dramatic, but too young. Begs to be housed in a good cellar for a good eight years.

Producer Information

Vérité Winery is a wine producer based in Sonoma County in California. It is most famous for its three Bordeaux-styled blends: La Muse, La Joie, and Le Désir, which have all received 100-point scores from American wine critic Robert Parker over several vintages. Winemaker Pierre Seillan got his start working with Bordeaux varieties at his family's estate in Armagnac. Before moving to the United States, he worked at Château de Targé in Saumur-Champigny in the Loire Valley, and at several châteaux in Bordeaux. Upon meeting California wine pioneer Jess Jackson in the 1990s, Seillan was convinced to move to Sonoma to make Bordeaux blend wines. Vérité sources fruit from the Alexander Valley, Bennett Valley, Knights Valley and Chalk Hill AVAs in Sonoma County. This range of sites provides more than 40 different types of soil, a range of altitudes and several different mesoclimates. Each vineyard block is vinified separately before a final blend for each wine is created. In a slight departure from the standard approach, Seillan made a 100 percent Tannat from Alexander Mountain Estate (which sits on the western Mayacamas Mountains overlooking the Alexander Valley) in 2010, although it appears this wine was a one-off. The three Vérité blends are dominated by a different Bordeaux variety. La Muse is Merlot-based, La Joie is Cabernet Sauvignon-based, and Le Désir is primarily Cabernet Franc. Due to the wines' success with the press, they are only available through a mailing list. The wines are still made by Seillan, although he is now joined by his daughter, Hélène, who has taken over assistant winemaker duties. Jess Jackson died in 2011.

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