WTN: Côte Rôtie in St. Joseph's Clothing

2004 Patrick Jasmin Côte Rôtie 12.5%
Blackberry, a bit of funk, and a hint of oak vanilla. Good acidity and balance, very enjoyable in an unpretentious vein. My only gripe has to do with my expectations more than the wine. Côte Rôtie has an associated gravitas that this doesn’t deliver, being closer to fresh and light, perhaps more like a St. Joseph. Here, I would want more extraction, more weight, I don’t know, more balls. Where’s the beefiness?

I don't know, beefy is not the first thing that comes to mind for CR. I think of CR as more delicate/elegant than beefy, and not necessarily bigger than St Joseph. With at least the producers I drink, the CRs and St Joes are both typically welterweights to middleweights, with Cornas and Hermitage ranging from middleweights to crusierweights

Well....my experience over the yrs w/ the Jasmin C-R is that they're more on the lighter/elegant side of C-R...maybe C-R Lite.
Typically lots of pretty floral Syrah fruit but not much extract and little of that classic C-R roasted/espresso character.
This was probably a $40-$50 btl and underperforms for that price.
Tom

Jasmin was always a lighter bodied Cote Rotie, and my impression is that this is even more true since the son, Patrick, took over from Robert in 1999.

I don't think you can approach these wines with body in mind and come away happy. Think of them as the Burgundies of the Northern Rhone, and enjoy the aromatics and elegance and you probably won't be disappointed.

There were a lot of producers that tanked pretty badly in the 2004 vintage - I think Ogier and Chapoutier did as well as any, but they are of course in the big bodied idiom.

I think my "model" for what CR should be was established in the 90s by Guigal La La's, Brune & Blondes, and the explanations seen in books for the word Rotie. Since Cornas and Hermitage can also be pretty powerful, I began to think of all Northen Rhone as a climate tending towards the powerful, with the exception of St. Joe. Now I am coming across lighter, more delicate CRs, but if they are "too" light, I feel there's something missing. As mentioned, I think the problem lies with my expectations more than the wine.

I believe that Cote Rotie also spread from the difficult to work slopes to flat areas which produce lesser wines, so unless you know the producer you don't know which you are going to get.

The Brun et Blonde can be excellent. I am still enjoying the remains of a case of 1995 (the 1994 died a sudden death a few years ago - just faded away)