Winemaker Notes
Deep garnet red in color, with purple highlights, this wine offers aromas of tar, smoke, raspberry, blackberry, walnut and licorice. On the palate, it is complex, velvety and balanced, showing notes of licorice, tobacco and cocoa.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Showing more minerality than the le Meal, yet more plushness and sexiness than the l’Ermite, the 2006 Ermitage le Pavillon is a tour de force that gives up sensational notes of crushed rocks, blackberries, currants, smoked meats and licorice. It shows a touch of iron and bloodiness with time in the glass, is full-bodied, seamless and incredibly layered on the palate. There’s no shortage of tannin either and this beauty needs 4-5 years of cellaring to hit full maturity, and will keep for another 2-3 decades.
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Wine Spectator
Tightly wound, with a mix of loganberry, blueberry and blackberry fruit all laced with espresso, loam and black tea hints. The dense, graphite-filled finish has a lot of unwinding to do.
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Wine Enthusiast
Le Pavillon is drawn from Les Bessards, the most granitic of Hermitage's climats, resulting in a wine with pronounced structure and minerailty. Hints of cinnamon and clove join plum and crushed stone on the nose, while the concentrated flavors suggest iron or beef blood as well. Drink 2015–2030. Cellar Selection.
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.