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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Vinous
Inky violet. Displays assertive aromas of blackcurrant, cherry-cola and violet, along with olive, smoked meat and vanilla nuances that gain strength with aeration. Vibrant, focused and appealingly sweet, offering intense, mineral-driven black and blue fruit, floral pastille and smoky bacon flavors that become deeper and spicier as the wine opens up. The floral note comes back strong on the impressively long, penetrating finish, which features youthfully chewy tannins and exotic spice notes.
Barrel Sample: 97-98 -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Hermitage Les Bessards is a behemoth, with palate-saturating levels of fruit and texture while it still stays pure, focused, and mineral-laced, with a classic Hermitage personality. Blue fruits, truffle, burning embers, sappy spring flowers, and liquid rock-like notes all define the aromatics, and it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, ripe, polished, yet building tannins, and a gorgeous finish. As with all of Jacques’ wines today, there's a certain polish and accessibility, yet this incredible Hermitage deserves 5-7 years in the cellar, and I'd be shocked to see it not have 30 years of overall longevity.
Rating: 97+ -
James Suckling
This giant Hermitage has remarkable meaty power, smoky mystery and inky depth. It is matched by the bold and refined structure on the wide-screen palate. The tannins slowly swell to a stunning crescendo at the fabulous finish, yet there is nothing overdone about this extraordinary wine. Drinkable now, but best from 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Looking terrific out of barrel, the 2020 Hermitage Les Bessards boasts classic aromas of crushed stone, black cherries and cassis on the nose. It's full-bodied, perhaps a touch warm, but with wonderfully silky, rich tannins and a long, licorice-tinged finish. It should drink well for close to two decades.
Barrel Sample: 95-97 -
Decanter
Full-bodied, fine and tightly wound, but with a good sense of harmony and typicity. Stretching skywards, this is a tense, saline style but with sufficient fat around the bones to make for a long-lasting wine. You can really feel the granite. From their oldest parcel of lieu-dit Les Bessards, fermented in concrete, then aged for 12 months in new and one-year-old barrels.
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Wine Enthusiast
A firm yet enticing expression with a captivating blend of black cherry, crème de menthe, violets and black olives. Fresh and vibrant, the palate is silky, with well-integrated tannins and a whisper of clove on the finish. Gamy undertones and lingering black olive notes add a compelling layer of complexity. Maisons Marques & Domaines USA.
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Wine Spectator
Rock-solid, with a core of clearly defined red and black cherry compote flavors that bristle with energy, as apple wood, savory and anise notes sparkle throughout. A racy graphite spine drives the finish, where a long, lingering twang of iron plays out amid the fruit. Best from 2024 through 2038.
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.