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Rol ValentinA classic garage wine, I thought, or was it? Actually, I don't have it with "garage wines". The definition alone is quite general and - to be honest - an abomination to me: "Wines that are produced with the highest quality standards by very small wineries. They are characterised by low yields per hectare, the highest possible ripeness of the grapes, strong concentration and extreme use of new barriques..." But at some point I wanted to know. I bought two bottles of Rol Valentin at an auction about ten years ago. Out of curiosity, I said to myself. A little later - it was also around Christmas/New Year - wine friends were with me and I opened - just curious - the first of the two bottles. A bitter disappointment. You could say: nothing special, not bad, but also not a wine by garage definition (see above). We really had a few Bordeaux peaks in the glass that evening, so the Rol Valentin had to go under. So the second bottle stayed in the cellar. Yesterday, another visit, it was brought to the table. And this time it worked. A beautiful, harmonious, round wine, with wonderful aromas (tertiary and fruit), no concentration bomb, the use of wood hardly noticeable, a wine that gives pleasure. So a rehabilitation for garage wines after all? Perhaps - certainly - not, because the 1994 vintage has probably not yet been the foto-rol-valentin1"Eric Prisette (ex-professional footballer) with the help of Stephane Derenoncourt. He only bought the vineyard in Saint Emilion this year. His handwriting - although his name is already on the label - should hardly be noticeable yet. Since the vintage - like all renowned Bordeaux - was bottled only two years later (in this case 1996), the new owner of the winery rightly draws on the label and a bit of Prisette/Derenocourt should also be in there. For me, it is an aha experience: so-called garage wines are defined (mainly or only) by the fashionable term (and the price) and much less by a new "wine philosophy". They are "mostly small wineries that cannot look back on a long winemaking tradition; a fashionable term that emerged in the 1990s". In any case, this half-garage wine was much better than the (same wine) I drank a few years ago. So impressions (and thus opinions) can change.

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