A Trio of French Perfection as Pomerol and Hermitage Rise: Weekly Tasting Report (Feb 1-7)

OK. Hold on. We have three perfect wines this week. They are from two of my favorite appellations in the world: Pomerol and Hermitage.

I first visited Pomerol in the summer of 1983 and was amazed by the soils of the best part of the small district. I could feel the sense of history and earth as I walked the vineyards. I even had lunch with the former winemaker of Chateau Petrus that day, Jean-Claude Berrouet, and he brought a bottle of 1964 Petrus to the meal in a small restaurant in a dusty hotel in the village of St. Emilion. It was the first vintage he had made and it was my first sip of Petrus. I was amazed by the complexity and exquisiteness of the wine. It was just before Petrus became the darling of wine collectors in America, which led to its cult status today.

A few years later, 1985 to be exact, I was standing in the terraced vineyards of Hermitage with Tim Johnston and Mark Williamson of Willi’s Wine Bar of Paris and learning why the unique soils and microclimates of the appellations made such incredible syrah. I was in some sort of vinous dream. The wines were so minerally and earthy at the same time and so different from anything I had encountered at my young age as a reporter and taster for The Wine Spectator. I drank Hermitage, and other Rhone wines, all the time in Paris, where I was living at the time.

I love the way wines are time machines and mark special moments and thoughts in your life!

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF ITALY 2021

So it comes with great pleasure that Senior Editor Stuart Pigott is busy tasting hundreds of samples from the Rhone Valley from his tasting room near Frankfurt. It's been a couple of years since our last Rhone report, so we felt the job needed to be done very thoroughly. Stuart has already tasted more than 300 wines from the Rhone, and my team and I have tasted some additional wines in Hong Kong from important producers to help complete the picture.

The focus of these tastings was the 2020 and 2019 vintages. Both were drought years with almost no rainfall during the summer, leading to exuberantly rich wines in 2019 and ripe (sometimes overripe) but more classically balanced results in 2020. This makes it a great time to buy Rhone wine!

It isn't necessary to reach for the most famous producers and appellations (and pay the corresponding prices) to get excellent quality, although the wines we gave top scores to were mostly from famous locations and winemakers. The red M. Chapoutier Ermitage L'Ermite 2019 is a perfect example of syrah from Hermitage, one of just a couple of French appellations with alternative spellings. It is unbelievably concentrated and every bit as refined.

'EXTREMELY LUSCIOUS WINES': Antoine Gimbert of Leoville Las Cases on Bordeaux 2019

'A COHERENT VINTAGE': Winemaker Omri Ram of Chateau Lafleur gives his take on 2019.

SPECTACULAR WHITES

Just a whisker behind it was the incredibly deep and vibrant Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape Hommage a Jacques Perrin 2020 – a mourvedre-based blend including grenache, syrah and other lesser-known regional varieties. The same producer's regular Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2020 also wowed us and costs just a fifth of the price of the Jacques Perrin bottling. It also has much wider distribution due to the larger production.

There were also some spectacular whites, most impressively the M. Chapoutier Ermitage Blanc De L'Orée 2019, a pure varietal marsanne that proves Rhone whites can not only pack plenty of power but also have dazzling elegance. Both this and the Ermitage L'Ermite 2019 are Selection Parcellaire – wines made from single plots of vines. They are remarkable expressions of these ancient vineyards that are biodynamically cultivated with only horse ploughing. For us, they are the finest wines to date from winemaker Michel Chapoutier.

Meanwhile, the two great names of Lafleur and L’Eglise Clinet made two incredible wines in my 2019 Bordeaux tastings. I was in awe of their transparency and complexity. They change every two or three seconds in aromas and flavors and deliver super depth and structure in a poised and refined way. Lafluer seems to make a perfect wine just about every vintage now, and it makes me wonder if it is France’s greatest domain at the moment, even ahead of something like La Tache from Domaine de la Romanee Conti.

I personally rated a number of other top 2019s, including Cos d’Estournel, Angelus, Leoville Las Cases and Troplong Mondot, as well as the whites of Cos. The 2019s keep impressing me and I am convinced that the vintage will deliver some of the most pleasurable young wines ever, like the 2015s did. As Lafite Rothschild winemaker Eric Kohler told me earlier, “You love them always.” In fact, “love” had been used a number of times during my few dozen Zoom interviews with producers in Bordeaux.

Also in the report are ratings for wines from Barolo, Napa, Sonoma, Douro, the Rheingau and other parts of the world. So dig deep and find some of our favorite bottles, or lesser-known ones.

– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor