French and Greek Côte-Rôtie side by side

I was looking forward to this comparison for a few months now. A bottle of 2005 Côte-Rôtie Brune et Blonde by Guigal was lying in my cellar for longer. A few months ago, as I discovered a Greek wine shop in Frankfurt, I stumbled upon this other bottle, a 2007 Syrah named Evangelo by Domaine Gerovassiliou. The shop owner explained that this wine is supposed to represent a Greek kind of Côte Rôtie, as it is made exactly with the same methods and even uses 8% ( double the amount compared to the Guigal!) of the white grape Viognier within the wine – a common thing in the Northern Rhône to stabilize color, add acidity and flavor to the wine. And as both wines even are in the same high price class (around 40 Euro), I thought this could only be an interesting showdown. Read the rest of this entry »

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