Jean-Michel Stephan Cote Rotie 'L'Ultime' 2021

With all that happened in the low quantity department in 2021, Jean-Michel made just one wine in 2021 instead of the typical 4 Côte Rôties wines. He made a single cuvée in 2021 combining ALL of the great terroirs that he works with.  The label is pretty cool too as it is an amalgamation of the four labels he normally makes just like the wine in th bottle!  As usual, this is 100% serine variant of syrah in this wine and a hefty dose of 15% viognier.

For over a decade, Jean-Michel Stephan, a resolutely organic/bio-dynamic domaine, has been developing a full-on cult following of natural wine enthusiasts. But the “natural wine” description shouldn’t imply a not unjustifiable fear of overt funkiness, at least these days. That was not the case back then, when Stephan’s wines were as out there as Côte-Rôtie could get. Today, Stephan produces from 4.5 hectares of vines, plus another five outside the appellation. A large, modern winery was built next door to the original Tupin-et-Semons cellar that came online just in time for the 2021 harvest. I do not doubt that this will help the family further enhance their wines’ already increasingly high quality. Prices have been moving upward rapidly. While Stephan’s wines (made with as little sulfur as possible and often with some carbonic maceration) still lean to the wild side, they are now significantly less feral than they were in the past.