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Domaine Bernard Faurie

Bernard Faurie, a fifth-generation grower at Hermitage, has long been lauded for producing the most graceful renditions of the appellation, usually wines of power that rarely exude elegance. He told me that Bessards, which constitutes 1.2 hectares of his total 1.7 hectares holdings on the hill, “can be a monster all by itself.” Thankfully, Faurie also owns a half-hectare each of Greffieux and Méal, allowing him to “tame the beast, at least a little bit.” The Greffieux imparts a “delicate, feminine and perfumed quality” while Méal brings “finesse and a regal quality because of its backbone.” Speaking to the 2017 vintage, Faurie told me that “there wasn’t much fruit but, what there was, was of excellent quality” and he thinks that the wines will make for excellent mid-term dinking “like the 2012s.” As for 2018, he calls the vintage “a sort of cross of the richness of 2017 and the finesse of 2016,” adding that at this early stage he believes that the wines “should age well on their balance but the tannins aren’t strict so they’ll probably never be forbidding, like, say, 2015 and 2010.” My early take on both the 2017s and 2018s here, is that they should enjoy quite long lives thanks to their balance.

From 2017 and 2018 Northern Rhône (Jul 2019) by Josh Raynolds

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2017 Hermitage Greffieux & Bessards

Color: Red

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