Winemaker Notes
A brilliant wine, with deep red hue, and lots of depth. The nose shows great class, with soft aromas of blackberries, violets. Hermitage Les Bessards shows plenty of concentration in its fruit. This wine has a particularly dense and rich tannic structure, and is extremely well balanced.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Hermitage Les Bessards shows the house style with its purity and finesse while still bringing beautiful Bessards' character. Cassis, crushed stone, burning embers, violets, and new leather notes all define the aromatics, and it's medium to full-bodied on the palate, with ultra-fine tannins, a silky, seamless mouthfeel, ample tannins, and a great finish. It needs 4-5 years in the cellar and will keep for over two decades.
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James Suckling
What a stunning nose this great Hermitage has. A cornucopia of wild berries and herbs with notes of licorice, smoke and black pepper. Enormously deep with a very complex, spicy character on the compact, full-bodied palate. Then the extremely long finish astonishes you with its great finesse. I could study all the nuances for hours, and the wine is just beginning a very long life. Matured in 100% in Burgundian oak barrels, of which a quarter were new. Best from 2027.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This cuvée, as always, shines brilliantly at this address. The 2022 Hermitage Les Bessards releases aromas of licorice, spices, dark berries, cassis and mulberries. It boasts a full-bodied, dense and layered palate with a concentrated, fleshy fruit core, followed by filigreed and velvety tannins, leading to a pure, delicate, mineral and prolonged finish. The grapes were entirely destemmed, and the wine matured in barrels, 20% of which were new. This vintage of Les Bessards is shaping into a stunning bottle, exemplifying controlled power and a racy character.
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Vinous
The enticing 2022 Hermitage Les Bessards has vivid notes of orange rind, black cherry, cedar, raspberry compote, dried herbs and iodine arising from the glass. Spicy and complex, the full-bodied 2022 lands on the palate with remarkable intensity, sporting spot-on balance and outstanding length. At a mere 13.37% alcohol, this is by no means a bulldozer, focusing on athleticism and finesse.
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Wine Spectator
Large in scale, with a fresh burst of blackberry fruit, melted licorice and chalky mineral notes edged in mesquite ash. Maintains elegance, with lavender and bitter cherry pit high tones, all wrapped around a spine of graphite. Inviting at first, this soon reveals muscular tannins that need more time to unfurl. Earthy, smoky, singed incense underpinnings mark the powerful and focused close. Best from 2026 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.