Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A spectacular Ermitage for the vintage, it’s ample, chiseled, vibrant, textured and layered. The nose has so much intensity and character, with crushed berries, grilled beef, smoke, bark, undergrowth, roasted peppercorns and hints of polished leather. It’s medium-bodied with finely grained tannins and bright acidity, yet it’s large and rather intense. Vertical succulence brings freshness to the spicy, dense and textured mid-palate. Velvety with restrained power. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Ermitage Les Greffieux offers a big mouthful of fruit as well as a more gamey profile in its black olive, beef blood, smoke and ripe dark fruits. This cuvée comes from the middle of the slope (which is slightly higher up in the Greffieux parcel) and is aged in 20% new oak. Drink this full-bodied, meaty, rich and unctuous beauty anytime over the coming two decades.
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Wine Spectator
Dense for the vintage, but with good restraint, as the core of lightly mulled plum, blackberry and black currant fruit rolls along, flecked with dried anise and mint notes. Shows a licorice root underpinning on the finish, with a frank loamy accent. Best from 2018 through 2030. 10 cases imported.
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Vinous
The 2014 Ermitage Les Greffieux has arrived at its prime drinking window. Intense tobacco, dried meat, ripe black plum and licorice notes are all pushed forward. Touching the medium- to full-bodied palate with marked flavor concentration, the 2014 is a forward Les Greffieux gently built around ripe tannins. This terminates with notable length on the savory finish.
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.