A standout of the range, the 2024 Saint-Véran Lieu (Inter)dit is based on lieu-dit Côte Rôtie along with some fruit from Les Cras this year. Offering up an attractive bouquet of peach, lychee, toasted nuts and reduction, it's medium-bodied, satiny and precise, with good depth and persistence.
This hugely popular wine is made from grapes grown in the "Côte Rôtie" vineyard, whose name the growers have been forbidden to use due to its more famous namesake in the Rhône. There is also a small amount of juice (5% of the total this year) from the "Terres Noires" vineyard that Guffens used to make as a single vineyard wine, until the yields become so low as to make it impractical. Pale lemon in colour with a tightly-wound, finely-etched nose that takes a little time to unfurl in the glass. With air, the fruit has a pristine, high-definition quality and a saline edge. Bright, with very youthful citrus, apple and pear fruit. The palate follows in the same vein, the structure presenting a tightly-coiled spring of fruit, racy acids, tensile wood smoke and an expansive, impressive finish. With air, the fruit fans out and shows off, polished but crisp and always tangy with acidity. Another excellent rendition of this cuvée, one that will improve with a year or two in bottle and drink well for a decade.
Julian Desplans (wine maker and right-hand man of Jean-Marie Guffens) says that the 2024 Verget wines have both minerality and power. Picked from September 10th to 28th. They are reminiscent of the 2010 and 2014 vintages.
