1996 Joël Taluau St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil Vieilles Vignes

The 1996 Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil “Vieilles Vignes” is the first wine I have ever tasted from Domaine Taluau and I was quite impressed. Monsieur Taluau started with a couple of hectares of vines in 1970 and has planted more on his estate as the years have allowed; he was joined full-time at the domaine by his daughter Véronique and her husband, Thierry Foltzenlogel in 1993. The domaine’s ’96 Vieilles Vignes bottling of Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil is deep and complex on the nose, offering up scents of dark berries, cassis, tree bark, cigar ash, dark soil tones and a touch of menthol in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, ripe and tangy, with a fine core of fruit, good soil undertow, tangy acids, still some ripe backend tannin and a long, complex finish. This is a very good bottle with plenty of life still ahead of it.