Winemaker Notes
Garnet-red with carmine tints. Notes of wild fruit and graphite. On the palate, aromas of blackcurrant jelly, bramble leaves and pencil lead.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A focused, layered, driven, attractive and characterful Ermitage. The nose enchants with aromas of wild berries, roasted meat, wood fire, crushed peppercorns, dried herbs, bark and warm spices. It’s medium-bodied yet intense and lively. Fine tannins coat the palate and frame the vivid and crunchy core of succulent berries driving the center palate. Agile and vertical, with so much precision and drive in the long finish. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2014 L'Ermite comes from a charming, moderately concentrated vintage, but you wouldn’t know that by tasting this wine. Awesome notes of scorched earth, charcoal, crushed violets, and pure crème de cassis all emerge from the glass, and it’s medium to full-bodied, has a stacked mid-palate, ripe tannins, and a great, great finish. It doesn’t have the sheer mass of fruit of the 2009, 2010, or 2015, yet it’s flawlessly balanced and a beautiful wine.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The inky black/purple-colored 2014 Ermitage l’Ermite is more firm, backward and mineral driven than the sexier Pavillon, offering fabulous notes of scorched earth, wood smoke, crushed violets, and both blackcurrant and crème de cassis. An utterly profound effort, it defines the more charming nature of the vintage, displaying building tannin and one seriously long finish. Forget bottles for 5-7 years and enjoy over the following two decades.
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Wine Spectator
This has a solid bass line, with notes of anise, blackberry and plum steeped together, carried by a grippy, cocoa-edged structure. The back half is all cut and drive, showing brambly energy and a lovely singed juniper element. Best from 2018 through 2032.
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Vinous
The 2014 Ermitage L'Ermite greets with intense notes of tobacco, ripe black fruit, forest floor, graphite and leather. Touching the full-bodied palate with elevated flavor concentration, the 2014 is built around astringent tannins that compromise the wine’s elegance. More rustic in structure and aroma profile when set against the Le Pavillon from the same vintage, the 2014 is a wild expression of L'Ermite.
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.