1998 Condrieu La Galopine

Under the direction of enologist Jacques Grange, who took over in 1997 following stints with Michel Chapoutier and Jean-Luc Colombo, Delas constructed a new cuverie at their industrial-looking base outside St. Jean de Muzol in time for the '99 harvest. The house can now use gravity to put their grapes into their new open-top concrete fermenters, in which the must takes longer to heat up but then retains heat better, according to Grange. Pigeage and remontage are carried out twice daily. Since '97, Grange has done a three-to-four-day cold maceration prior to the onset of fermentation, which he believes has given the wines more flesh and opulence. Cuvaison varies according to the vintage and wine: from 14 days for the Crozes-Hermitage in '98 to 24 days for the Hermitage. Grange experimented with malolactic fermentation in barriques with the '97 Saint-Joseph and has since then adopted this approach for several of his other reds. The house rotates one-quarter of its barrels each year (actually 50 of 150 are now new, due to recent purchases of new oak to replace the old foudres Grange eliminated), as Grange does not like oaky wines. x000D x000D x000D x000D Grange describes his '98s as chewier than the '97s, with a lot of tannins. They are now a bit shy and retiring, and their aromas are developing slowly. Based on the handful of powerful, aromatically precise wines I sampled from barrel, 1998 promises to be the comeback vintage for this old house. However, I was not able to taste Delas's numerous cru bottlings, as they had not yet been assembled. At every racking, Grange told me, lesser barrels may be declassified, so any early look at a likely special cuvee would not be representative of the wine actually bottled. I also missed a few of the limited '97 bottlings, as the house was not adequately prepared for my visit, and bottled wines are kept elsewhere. A number of '97s I did taste were marred by a disturbing middle-palate dryness or greenness-characteristics I did not notice in the '98s I sampled from barrel.