2012 Domaine Giraud Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Community Tasting Notes (28) Avg Score: 90.3 points

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  4/25/2024 - vide Likes this wine: 92 Points

  Dense in colour, ditto palate. Not overly subtle, but we can accommodate non subtlety on our palate when we have a wine that has depth such as this.
  
  It is a peasant wine (and I mean that as a complement). Beaucastel may give you more aromatic complexity, but this wine does the job in its sterling simplicity.
  
  It was probably half the price. I can't remember. The older I get and nearer to death, the less the price of wine matters.
  
  vide = mt

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  12/4/2022 - oenanthe wrote: 86 Points

  Unfortunately another underwhelming bottle, not flawed but definitely unbalanced; I felt every degree of the 15% alcohol. A real shame as I know this has the capacity to be stellar on its day. Pleasant aromas in the glass, reasonably classic herbal garrigue. But on the palate wild, overtly plummy, alcoholic and the unmistakeable and unwanted taste of prunes. The legs were very prominent on the side of the glass. There are some southern Rhones where everything is so in tune and balanced that you simply cannot tell that it is 14-15% (some are even higher!), and they remain very pleasurable to drink until the next morning. My first bottles of this wine fell into this bracket, but later ones have been disjointed and this was a mess I’m afraid. I wanted a winter warmer on a chilly Sunday afternoon, and I suppose in one sense that is exactly what I got, but this was a real disappointment and puts me right off these southern blockbusters. One bottle left, fingers crossed that there is a final flourish.

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  6/3/2022 - Thoughtsonfly Likes this wine: 92 Points

  Great nose of ripe blue/purple fruit and red licorice. Palate is silky, crème de cassis or blackberry liqueur, with fully settled tannins and ideal acidity. Drink alone or with food, perfect now through 2025.

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  5/26/2022 - pgb67 wrote: 90 Points

  Ripe and warm with a forward display of fruit - cassis, cherry and boysenberry. Over time shows a more candied nature with notes of red licorice and mulling spice. In a good place now.

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  5/16/2022 - oenanthe Likes this wine: 86 Points

  Versus my last bottles, a clear disappointment. This one was disjointed - plummy and hot. I checked the label to discover with some surprise that this was 15% abv - the fact that I never even felt the need to look at this for the prior 3 bottles tells its own story. It was slightly better on day two, but still alcoholic and vaguely pruney. Only after three hours it had settled down a bit, but the prior bottles were good to go immediately so this was a very different story. Two bottles to go from the case, let's hope that this was a temporary aberration as it remains one of the best bottles of CNdP I have ever had.

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