Winemaker Notes
Steady garnet red with aromas of black fruit and minerals. Powerful tannins, licorice.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
From the deeper soils at the bottom of the Le Méal lieu-dit, the 2016 Ermitage Les Gréffieux was all destemmed and saw its normal 18 months in a mix of Burgundy barrels and demi-muids, with just 25% being new. This is a rich, powerful, black-fruited expression of this cuvée, offering up tons of blackcurrants, blackberries, smoked earth, chocolate, and spice. Inky colored, full-bodied, sensationally concentrated, and opulent on the palate, it's a killer bottle of wine that can be drunk today or cellared for 25 years or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Typically the most approachable of Chapoutier's parcel selections, the 2017 Ermitage les Greffieux is a plush, generous, downright sexy Hermitage. Loaded with redcurrants and spice and supported by silky tannins, it should be drinkable by 2020 yet drink well through at least 2035.
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Decanter
Aged in 30% new oak, both barriques and demi-muids. It's deeply fruited, with blackberry and blackcurrant alongside some more exotic fruits. Very full, flowing and richly-fruited with deep tannic drive, and some star-anise on a long, dark, very fresh finish. A very successful Greffieux this year. Drinking Window 2024 - 2034
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James Suckling
Wild, exotic fruit, pepper and spice here. This is really wild. Blood-orange, herb and dark, spicy notes run riot amid dark, ripe, blood plums and punchy, fresh oak. The palate delivers a big serving of rich, dark plums and berries with fleshy impact and a powerful, tannin structure. From organically grown grapes.
Barrel Sample: 94-95 -
Wine Enthusiast
Layers of smoke and earth keep this wine tightly closed upon opening but aeration coaxes out ripe, almost sun-baked notes of black plum and cherry preserve. It’s a shy wine in youth with tannins that are taut and a bit bitter. Wait until 2023—it should improve well through 2035 and hold further.
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.