Eric Rodez Les Genettes Grand Cru 2010

Rodez's 2010 Brut Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru Ambonnay Les Genettes wafts from the glass with a lovely bouquet of candied peel, buttered orchard fruit, Meyer lemons, yellow plums and subtle spices, followed by a full-bodied, broad-shouldered but elegantly integrated palate with excellent depth at the core, ripe but racy acids and a creamy mousse, concluding with a sapid, precise finish. This gourmand but beautifully focused, decidedly vinous blanc de noirs is one of the most cohesive, fully realized wines in this set of recent releases, and it appears to possess the structural integrity and balance to last for over a decade.

The fantastic thing about this wine is that it has everything. The nose is very expressive – lots of fresh white fruit, apple and toasty brioche notes. It smells very serious! The palate opens with a huge rush of rich, ripe fleshy fruit – hints of the tropics thanks to pineapple and melon and a generous yet well balanced foundation of oak. Just when you start thinking that this is a big wine, the richness and weight tapers in and tightens up and the wine becomes very mineral and linear. That tropical, fleshy fruit gives way to a warm spice and the acidity, that has been the backbone of the wine from the very start, supports a very, very long mineral finish. The earlier hints on the nose were right! This is indeed a very serious wine that is immensely pleasurable now but that clearly has the gravitas, structure and complexity to last for a very long time.