Northern Rhône: A First Look at the 2019s

BY JOSH RAYNOLDS | MAY 14, 2020

While my late-winter visit to the northern Rhône focused primarily on tasting the 2017s and bottled 2018s, I also had a chance to try a good number of 2019s. Like 2018, 2019 was a hot and dry year, but the wines look extremely promising and show an uncanny blend of depth and vivacity.

I arrived in the northern Rhône at the end of February and worked for the first two weeks of March, then departed on Friday the 13th, just a day before COVID-19 travel restrictions began. It was good timing in many ways, not only because I was able to sample a good number of 2019s in producers’ cellars, all of which had finished their malolactic fermentations, but I also made it home safely and without any inconveniences.

Some of the most complex and age-worthy wines in the world come from the granitic soils of the Hermitage hill.

A First Look at 2019

What follows is my first look at the young 2019s. Readers should consider my scores for these wines highly provisional and subject to small – I hope only minor – revisions when I revisit them on my next trip, whenever that might happen. Still, 2019 is clearly a vintage of extremely high quality and marks the fifth straight stellar year for the region. A number of producers who aren’t prone to hyperbole told me they think 2019 and 2015 are the most impressive of this recent run of great years, but for different reasons. It’s rare to find real freshness and detail in wines from a year that was as hot and rain-bereft as 2019, but paradoxically, that’s indeed the case.

Two thousand nineteen endured an abnormally hot and dry growing season by historical standards (though fairly typical now, by current measures) that started off with pockets of spring hail and frost but nothing so major as to precipitate a short crop. The hot, dry summer that followed definitely induced some angst among the growers, who noted that it was critical to maintain healthy vine canopies to protect the grapes from the heat and sun. Fortunately, for those making such a viticultural move, there was basically no rain during the summer, meaning that mildew that might have formed under the canopies was a non-issue. Also, while it was definitely hot, temperatures were not excessive. Well-timed and beneficial rains in late August and early September helped freshen the vineyards and keep acidity levels sound.

There was a healthy crop load in most appellations except for the hail-ravaged southern sector of Crozes-Hermitage, which saw many of its vineyards (and apricot and peach trees) completely decimated on June 15. The storm only lasted about 20 minutes, but the hailstones were the size of tennis balls and winds were clocked at up to 60 kilometers per hour. The fruit loss in some spots was total, and most of the producers I visited who have vines in the area, especially at Chassis, said they lost at least 50% of their fruit.