Winemaker Notes
The wine is a brilliant, deep red hue with lots of depth. The nose shows great class, with soft aromas of blackberries and violets. Hermitage "Les Bessards" shows plenty of concentration in its fruit. This is a wine with a particularly dense tannic structure, and extremely good balance.
This wine pairs well with red meats, game, and spicy stews. This wine needs at least three years cellaring before it can open up its complexity. After this time, it should be decanted before serving. It is recommended you open the bottle one to three hours before drinking.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
My favorite release from this estate is consistently their Les Bessards Hermitage, and their 2019 is no exception. Coming from the western part and pure broken granite soils on the west side of this magical hill, it sports a dense purple hue to go with a brilliant perfume of cassis, graphite, scorched earth, burning embers, spring flowers, and peppery herbs. Incredibly complex, layered, and nuanced, with classic Hermitage characteristics, it still stays firmly planted in the ripe, sunny, sexy vintage. Full-bodied, concentrated, and structured on the palate, it has a wealth of tannins, flawless balance, and a great finish.
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Decanter
Blackberry, tapenade and liquorice bouquet. An intense and savoury expression; mouth-filling and very powerful. The oak is present, helping to rein in the fruit. Mineral core and textured, well-mannered tannins. Layered, long, complex finish; at the dawn of its life and will only improve. Outstanding.
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Wine Enthusiast
Sourced from the oldest plot of Les Bessards in the heart of Hermitage, this limited-production, site-specific Syrah expresses the heat and power of the 2019 vintage with elegance. Massive in structure and richly extracted, it's packed with lip-staining blueberry and cassis flavors. A perfumed lift of violet and lingering notes of smoked tea leaves and vanilla mark the finish. Seductive already, the wine will show best from 2025 to 2040.
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Wine & Spirits
From the heart of the Hermitage hill, this feels sun-soaked and warm, with an earthy sweetness to its dark, licorice-scented fruit. With air it blossoms, the fruit turning fresher, redder and juicier, spurred on by taut acidity and herbal details. All the while, the mineral tones hold the wine firm, as if tethering the fruit to the hill’s granite base. Right now, it handles its oak better than the 2019 Domaine des Tourettes, but feels slightly less multifaceted. Cellar the two together to see which one wins out in the long run.
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Wine Spectator
This is loaded with dark and winey plum sauce, blackberry paste and fig compote flavors that glide through over notes of warm earth, sweet tobacco and anise. A subtle singed alder hint infuses the finish, along with a flicker of violet, while the fruit takes an encore. This shows seriously hefty fruit matched with a terrific underpinning of terroir. For the cellar.
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.