To all Best Winers,
I see and taste a lot of wines every year. Thousands of them.
Between that and what I devour from the written page, I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what’s out there in the market. I’m seldom surprised by a wine that walks through the door considering I’ve more than likely either read about it or tasted it.
That being said, this wine was a major surprise to me.
Chave makes a third Hermitage? Really?
The King of French Syrah, the finest, most acclaimed beacon in Hermitage has a value-priced offering from his signature appellation? Really?
Really. I saw it. I tasted it. I then bought all I could find. It’s here.
I think Chave wants to work on the down-low with this stuff. Y’know, the whole hushed whispers thing. I’ve never seen a bottle before, heard about it, or seen it promoted. The term elusive doesn’t do the wine’s availability (or lack thereof) justice.
There’s only been one review I’ve seen on this wine. It was from Wine Spectator, it was a ‘93’ and it was glowing. Not even the guy that helped put Chave on the map, Bob Parker, has reviewed this wine.
What the heck is going on here? Head still exploding…
When I visit the importer’s website I do indeed find a fact sheet for the wine (of course Chave, being Chave, does not have a website since they don’t really need to, right?).
This cuvee is composed of 10-60 year old Syrah vines from a couple really choice parts of the Hermitage hill. To be exact, here’s the importer’s notes on the what and where of this under-the-radar wine (thanks, David!):
“The grapes come from 3 distinctive parts of the Hermitage hill. Diognières is at the base of the hill on alluvial soil brought by the river ages ago. It is a sandy clay soil with many small pebbles. It gives spice to the wine. The next parcel is Péleat. It sits above Diognières and is composed of more sand and limestone in the clay. It gives finesse to the wine. And finally, Greffieux sits at the base of Le Meal on the hill. Its soil consists of rolled river stones brought by the glaciers. It gives the flesh in the wine.”
“Farconnet was the name of a nobleman back in the time of Jean-Louis Chave’s great grandfather. He was actually the man from whom the great grandfather bought the Bessards parcel.”
I’ve tasted this wine twice in the last two weeks. Both times it was Farconnet awesome. It is without a doubt from the Chave stable with that mad, crazy interplay of elegance and power. This wine has a hand-crafted, sensual Burgundian feel on the palate. At six years old the tannins are resolved and supple, velvety but the wine is still youthful. The finely-tuned acids make my mouth water in a Pavlovian manner just writing about them.
The fruit is in abundance, but not too much of it. The concentration is there, but the wine is not at all heavy. White pepper, meat, cherry, currant, baking spices with some air, this has the whole nine yards.
I’ve had the actual 2007 Chave Hermitage on a separate occasion. I’d say it’s a touch bigger than this, maybe another layer of complexity, but it is no more refined. Best price in the country on that wine is approaching $200 a bottle.
You can grab some of this bad boy for a third of that price ($59.88), which includes a nice haircut on the wine’s MSRP of $85. Just don’t tell anybody. I don’t think the Chave’s are too keen on word getting out! Only 9 cases are available.
And hey, don’t sleep on Chave’s outrageously great 2010 St. Joseph Blanc Celeste (Wine Spectator 92). At $27 a bottle it is one of the finest values in great white Rhone wine on the market and one of our favorite wines under Chave’s excellent negociant label.
Hermitage Hill
Kyle Meyer and Tristen Beamon, Proprietors, BestWinesOnline.com
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