Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Super chalky nose with peach blossom and orange blossom leading to peach, orange citrus and orange peel flavors. This still has a little of the flesh and puppy fat on the palate. Still building. Extremely complex and very powerful.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This under-the-radar vintage of Chave's Hermitage continues to impress every time. The 2001 Hermitage offers ethereal hints of violets and dried spices on the nose, set against a complex backdrop of redcurrants and green olives.
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Wine Spectator
This is an elegant, sinewy vintage that is just starting to hit its stride, with a strong sanguine and cedar frame to the core of dried red currant, cherry pit and red licorice notes. A racy iron note is now in full throat on the finish. The commanding minerality should carry this through a second stage of life.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Reminding me slightly of a lighter weight 1999, the 2001 Hermitage is another wine just now coming into its prime drink window. Still youthful ruby-hued with little lightening at the rim, it offers complex notes of red and black currants, new saddle leather, spicy herbs and flowers.
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.