Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Hermitage Ligne De Crête comes all from the Les Grands Vignes lieu-dit, at the very top of Hermitage Hill, and is aged for 20 months in fine-grain barrels. It's another inky hued Hermitage yet has a more rounded, supple style compared to the Les Bessards, with gorgeous cassis and black raspberry fruits, notes of crushed stone, bacon fat, new leather, and flowery incense, full-bodied richness, velvety tannins, and a great finish. This seamless, sexy, incredibly floral Hermitage will be drinkable with just 4-5 years of bottle age and keep for 20-30 years.
Barrel Sample: 96-98 -
James Suckling
What an amazing nose this Hermitage has with effusive aromas of summer flowers, including red roses, plus pomegranate and licorice. Stunning concentration, but no less remarkable elegance. However, that's the rational way to describe this wine. Actually, I just want to sink into the embrace of this extraordinary beauty. Enormously long and refined finish. A barrel selection from a two-hectare vineyard at the top of the hill of Hermitage on granite soil. Drink or hold.
-
Vinous
Deep, vivid ruby. Smoky, mineral- and spice-accented red and dark berry preserve scents show excellent clarity and a sexy floral top note. Offers concentrated but wonderfully energetic blackberry, bitter cherry and spicecake flavors that become sweeter and pick up hints of candied flowers, vanilla and olive on the back half. Finishes chewy, sharply focused and extremely long, with solid tannins adding shape and final grip.
Barrel Sample: 97-98 -
Wine Spectator
This is packed with inviting boysenberry and mulberry pate de fruit flavors, harnessed for now by taut mesquite and apple wood notes and set against a backdrop of anise, violet and black tea. Remarkably fresh through the finish, belying a well-buried iron note. Hard to resist now, but just you wait. Best from 2023 through 2036. 167 cases made, 12 cases imported.
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.