La Tablée Dinner Recap - The Genius of Noël Verset
Raj Vaidya
12/4/2023
As the kick-off dinner for our La Tablée festival, we were honored to host a dinner with Mannie Berk, founder of the Rare Wine Company, and share a glimpse into history, with 14 vintages of Cornas from Noël Verset sourced from Mannie’s private collection.
Noël was born in 1912 and joined his father in the vines in the early 30’s. He continued to work in the vines, making the benchmark wine for the appellation of Cornas for more than 7 decades, and finally retiring after vinifying the 2006 vintage. The first vintage bottled at the domaine was 1943, and the winemaking was very classical in approach, all whole-cluster, food tread, large demi-muid barrels, very long aging. Each bottle felt like a walk back in history, a delicious time machine.
Overall, the evening was a tremendous showcase of how consistent and long lived the wines of Noël were and are. The youngest vintages (even despite the differing vineyard sources) were very much linked energetically and in flavor profile to the wines from the early aughts, ‘90’s and even the 80’s. And each bottle showed tremendous depth and complexity, clearly proving his mastery of the craft of vinifying Cornas.
Mannie Berk led the discussion about the wines, and all the wines we served came from his private collection. Our founder, Daniel Johnnes, introduced the evening and the wines, and I piped in with some observations about the terroir, as in years past I’ve been lucky enough to visit Chaillots with Franck Balthazar and Sabarotte with Olivier Clape, each of whom acquired these parcels from Noël prior to his passing.
We enjoyed additional commentary from Walla Walla winemaker Christophe Baron, who was in attendance and had worked with Noël in the early 2000’s.
A few thoughts on the vintages that stood out as more special than others:
2006: Impressive showing for Noël’s last vintage, according to Mannie Berk this was made exclusively from the Champelrose lieux dit. Super delicate, ethereal even.
2005: According to Mannie, entirely from the Chaillot parcel, today farmed by Franck Balthazar. More powerful than the ’06, spicier and more austere in structure.
2004: The prettiest of the flight of ‘young’ wines, a blend of the Chaillot and Champelrose vineyards. This was a vintage I’ve had little experience with, but it stood out from the other great wines of the older flights in that the tannic structure was much more delicate, likely because by this point the Sabarotte vineyard was excluded (having been sold to Domaine Clape by this era.)
1998: While the ’01, ‘00 and the ’99 gave us a clear view of the precision and structure of the earlier blend, the ’98 truly gave us our first look at the intensity and elegance of the Verset legacy. The vintage managed to toe the line between an animal intensity and floral aromatics that made the domaine’s wines stand out. Spectacular.
1995: Similar in structure to the ’98 but a touch richer in fruit, giving it a plush character. Spicy with pepper notes but less savory and gamey than the ’98.
1991: This was my clear ‘wine of the night.’ Stunning aromatic profile of classic black olive, rosemary, layers of green and black peppercorns, animal gamey notes and a blood-rich iron finish. This almost tasted younger than all the subsequent vintages, its age only showing in the wine’s depth of expression. The longest finish by far of all the wines in the tasting.
1989: Perhaps the most beautiful of all the wines. While the ’91 seemed to edge ahead in qualitative comparison the reason for it was not any fault of the ’89, perhaps just the ‘more-ness’ of the ’91. The ’89 presented with the same profile of complexity as the ’91 but was softer, leaner on tannin, a touch less body, more mellow in its finish. Seamless and simply breathtaking.
1985: Perhaps the only mature tasting wine of the entire tasting 😊… delicious palette but slightly musty nose. The maturity manifested in a very compelling smoky, tobacco notes. Tannins still definitely present but softened with age. Gorgeous.
