Today marks the release of the 2017 vintage from Verite in the Sonoma Valley.
This is Pierre Seillan’s 20th Verite vintage, and his 50th vintage as a vigneron. For Seillan, “this vintage is one of the five greatest Vérité releases to date”.
For a third consecutive year, La Muse, La Joie and Le Desir are offered as a 3-pack collection case. Verite’s flagship wines have been released at £3840 per 12×75 in the UK, up 2% on the 2016’s release price of £3,760 per 12×75.
La Muse, composed 100% of Merlot, boasts 99 points from The Wine Advocate’s Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW. Perrotti-Brown noted that “stylistically, it stands apart from previous vintages, possessing the same magical intensity, but with less weight and more pop”.
Le Desir – a Pomerol-inspired blend (in 2017, 80% Cabernet Franc, 17% Merlot and 3% Malbec) and Barbara Banke’s favourite – received 98 points from Perrotti-Brown. In her tasting note, she commented: “The medium-bodied palate (just 13.9% alcohol) is at once powerful and wonderfully elegant, with firm, very fine-grained, exquisitely ripe tannins and bold freshness supporting the red and blue fruit layers, finishing with incredible length and depth”.
Finally, Perrotti-Brown described La Joie 2017 as “particularly elegant but no less impactful” and gave it 98+ points.
The release price of the assortment currently sits above all other recent vintages available in the market, bar the 100-point Muse 2007. The highly scored 2013 in single bottles and the 2015 assortment case both appear of relative value.
