Winemaker Notes
Pair this wine with rare or medium-cooked games, marinated meats and spicy stews. We recommend opening this bottle between one and three hours before drinking.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
An incredibly consistent wine, you can never go wrong with the Domaine des Tourettes release from Delas. Inky hued, with a great nose of pure cassis, crushed rocks, camphor, new leather, and hints of bacon fat, the 2020 Hermitage Domaine Des Tourettes hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a round, layered texture, beautiful depth on the mid-palate, and velvety tannins. Aromatically, it's not far off the Bessards cuvée, yet it's more plush and up-front on the palate. It will benefit from just 4-5 years of bottle age and should have decades of longevity. It's another totally brilliant wine from this talented team.
Barrel Sample: 95-97 -
James Suckling
Dense black fruit aromas with hints of tar and leather. A bold and powerful wine with a serious tannin structure that's wrapped in ripe fruit. Long smoky and stony finish that tells you this has an excellent future ahead of it. Matured for more than 18 months in oak barrels, of which a quarter were new.
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose is powerful, revealing a brooding blend of boysenberry, leather and black olives, underscored by a touch of iodine. On the palate, earthy mushrooms and violets unfold, seamlessly balanced by firm tannins and lively acidity, showcasing the wine’s refined depth and structure. Maisons Marques & Domaines USA.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The cherry and berry-scented 2020 Hermitage Domaine des Tourettes—tasted from barrel—is a smooth, silky-textured, medium to full-bodied effort that should be approachable relatively young, yet it has the stuffing and backbone to age at least a decade, perhaps more.
Barrel Sample: 90-92 -
Wine Spectator
Ripe, fresh and sleek, with a beam of dark cherry and red currant fruit driving through, laced gently with singed apple wood, savory and violet notes along the way. The fruit keeps a steady presence through the focused finish, while an iron note develops. Best from 2023 through 2035.
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Wine & Spirits
Blended from l’Ermite, le Sabot and les Bessards, this is still primary, its formidable concentration making it a challenge to pick out the acidity, though there's plenty of it nestled amidst that richness. On the second day open, its fruit starts to emerge from the bookends of oak (it ages in a mix of new and second-fill barrels), and blueberry-skin tannins make their presence known. This wine will benefit from a few years to sort out its concentration, but it's drinkable now alongside grilled pheasant.
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.