2011 Hermitage Blanc

Philippe Guigal was distinctly under the weather when I came to see him the week before Christmas and he insisted that we conduct our tasting "from as far away from each other as possible" lest I get anything even remotely similar to whatever mutation of flu was attacking him. Under the circumstances he was surprisingly animated as he discussed recent vintages and their triumphs and travails. He said that 2013 was a vintage of mixed blessings because on the one hand demand has never been higher but on the other production was down dramatically, "so you can't win." It was an especially tough year for Grenache in the south, he said, which means that, as in 2011, there will be more Syrah than normal in their wildly successful and widely available Côtes-du-Rhône. Guigal calls 2012 "a pretty much perfect year for a winery because the wines are very appealing young but have the material to age, so everybody can be happy." The 2011s, he thinks, will be appreciated by "those who appreciate the differences of terroir because the distinctions from appellation to appellation and vineyard to vineyard are very clear, unlike in riper years." The '11s will likely be best over the short to medium term, in his estimation, "but they have the balance to surprise you" if you choose to let them rest for a bit. On the subject of 2010, Guigal shrugged his shoulders and said, "well, we know what happened there, right? A great, great year for the patient, not so much if you want to drink them young."

Since the practice here isn't to release wines on a predictable schedule, a cellar visit offers the chance to taste a wide-ranging set of vintages, from bottle as well as cask: current releases here stretch back to 2007, for example. Philippe Guigal summed up the most recent vintages in the northern Rhone as "a kind of crazy show of extremes: '07 fruity and supple, '08 bright and lean, '09 ripe and exotic, '10 structured and masculine, '11 a more round and fruity version of '08, and '12 a more friendly and open '10." In other words, he said, "we've seen almost every possible style that you can imagine in a really short time, without any of the vintages being truly bad." That's not to say that he doesn't have his preferences (that would be 2010, for the patient) and, from what I gleaned from our conversation, 2009, which he called "a vintage for wine lovers while 2010 is for wine collectors."