2001 Verite, La Muse, Sonoma County, Magnum (1.5L)

RP100 "2001 was the first truly great vintage for Jess Jackson and Pierre Seillan, and that is evidenced by the utterly perfect 2001 La Muse, a blend of 87% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Malbec. Over three-fourths of it came from the Alexander Mountain estate of Jess Jackson, and the rest from Chalk Hill, Knights Valley, and a tiny bit from Bennett Valley. This dense purple-colored effort exhibits notes of licorice, creme de cassis, plum sauce, violets and truffles. Full-bodied with magnificent density, overall equilibrium, stunning purity, sweet but abundant tannin and a fabulous finish, this profound wine remains a baby at age ten. Give it another 5-6 years of bottle age and drink it over the following 35-40+ years. It is very French in style even though one could argue that this level of concentration can only be achieved by a handful of wines from Pomerol and St.-Emilion." RP May 2011

LP100 "The 2001 La Muse is a blend of 87% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Malbec. Deep garnet-brick in color, it strides out with confident cigar box, smoked meats, tapenade, and incense notes over a core of prunes and Christmas cake. The full-bodied plate is jam-packed with multi-layered, rich, spicy, black fruit preserves flavors, finishing with an opulent finish that just goes on and on. This is quintessential La Muse." LPB for TWI Jun 2022

Robert Parker writes, "These are the visionary efforts of the recently deceased Jess Jackson, one of the great men in California’s history of high quality winemaking. Verite was started in 1998, when Jess Jackson brought over Bordelais winemaker Pierre Seillan, and essentially gave him carte blanche authority to pick the best fruit he could to fashion these three cuvees. La Muse is his verison of a Pomerol, made from Jess Jackson’s high-elevation vineyards in Alexander Valley, Knights Valley and Chalk Hill, the La Joie is his Medoc look-alike from a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and of course, Le Desir is a Sonoma clone of a St.-Emilion, made generally from high quantities of both Merlot and Cabernet Franc, with just a little Cabernet Sauvignon in them. These wines are the epitome of natural wine, aged 24-32 months in new French oak, with wood staves selected by Jackson and his team in France, and the wines then bottled unfined and unfiltered." Published: May 01, 2011