Delas Hermitage Les Bessards 2007
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator -
Wine
Enthusiast
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007 Hermitage Les Bessards is more fruit-forward, offering notes of concentrated black cherry and cassis fruit intermixed with licorice, truffle, earth, and pain grille characteristics. Deep, rich, softer, and more fruit-forward in a seductive, opulent style, this beauty should have 20-25 years of longevity.
Range: 91-92 -
Wine Spectator
A dark, smoldering style, exhibiting cocoa powder and braised fig notes up front, followed by additional espresso, mulled currant, melted licorice and graphite notes that push through on the muscular finish. Latent minerality keeps it all together. Drink now through 2018. 830 cases made.
-
Wine Enthusiast
Leathery and woody is the first impression you'll get, but the palate excels with grippy warmth, a firm tannic structure and dark, plummy flavors that bring black olive, sous bois and sauvage flavors that are true to Rhône Syrah. Tasted by a three-person panel, the wine was unanimously well liked, with one reviewer finding it more hard and "clacky" than the others.
Other Vintages
2019-
Jeb
Dunnuck -
Wine
Spectator - Decanter
-
Wine
Enthusiast -
Wine &
Spirits
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Enthusiast -
James
Suckling -
Wine
Spectator
-
James
Suckling - Decanter
-
Wine
Spectator -
Jeb
Dunnuck -
Wine
Enthusiast -
Wine &
Spirits -
Robert
Parker
-
Jeb
Dunnuck -
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator -
James
Suckling -
Wine &
Spirits
-
Robert
Parker
-
Robert
Parker -
James
Suckling -
Wine
Spectator
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
-
Robert
Parker
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
-
Wine
Spectator -
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Enthusiast
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Enthusiast
Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
One of the smallest and most important Syrah regions of northern Rhone, Hermitage is practically one single south-facing slope of crushed granite, thinly covered with varied, yet well-charted soil types. Many climats (well identified parcels) exist within Hermitage and while some smaller producers make single climat Syrahs, some larger ones blend to make one balanced expression of the appellation.
Though the AC regulations allow the addition of up to 15% white grapes to a red Hermitage, in practice it is usually made from Syrah alone. Winemaking is pretty traditional—or you might say historic—with hot fermentations and aging in older barrels of various sizes. The best wines, characterized by deep, dense and sexy flavors of black fruit, cocoa, licorice and tobacco, have massive textures and a solid 10-20 years aging potential.
The region of Hermitage is totally enclosed; the only place it could go really is to literally fall down its own hill into the city of Tain or the Rhone River. Soil erosion is a problem and terraces exist alongside the hill in order to keep the earth in place. Crozes-Hermitage encloses the region entirely to its north and south.
While Hermitage seems synonymous with some of the best Syrah on the planet, actually about one third of the wine produced here comes from white grapes. The full, lush and robust Marsanne or the less common, but almost more charming, Roussanne create wonderful whites in which the best have great potential for aging, like the reds.