1998 Hermitage Les Bessards

Director/enologist Jacques Grange initially felt the young 2000s were fine if a bit diluted by high yields, with the tannins not quite ripe enough. "Until September of this year I thought the red wines lacked concentration and structure compared to our region's wines, but now I find that they have good balance, finesse and purity," he explained. "And when you compare them to syrah from elsewhere around the world, they're not so bad." Still, Grange added, they will need earlier bottling than the '99s or '98s: the top '98s got an elevage of 26 months and the '99s 24 months, but the 2000s will be bottled after just 15 months. Grange finds the '98s especially true to their sites, while he considers the '99s the best vintage for the Northern Rhone since 1990. The house's top 1999 cuvees parcellaires showed spectacularly in November.

In the absence of director/enologist Jacques Grange, who was out of the country during my days in the Hermitage area, I was able to taste only a limited selection of wines from the '98 vintage, as well as a few samples of '99. Grange declined to prepare samples of his 1999 cuvees parcellaires as in a few cases the final blends for these cru bottlings had not been made and in others the wines had recently been racked. Grange has revitalized this old house since taking over in '97, but 1998 was the breakout vintage for Delas, as many of the company old oak foudres were replaced before the latter harvest. Grange gives most of his red wines a bit of pre-fermentation cold soak to obtain greater texture and flavor, and has increasingly carried out the malolactic fermentations in barriques which has helped to integrate the wines' wood component and achieve more opulence. Among the wines I sampled in November were several dense, powerfully structured reds that augur well for the continued improvement of this house.

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.