2017 Hermitage

Guigal produces a staggering amount of wine, some 5,000,000 bottles per year, with their consistently excellent red, white and pink Côtes-du-Rhônes making up just under half. The Côte-Rôtie Brune et Blonde usually hovers around a quarter-million bottles per vintage, which makes it far and away the highest-production wine of the appellation. Perhaps even more impressive than those numbers is the constantly high quality of the wines, up and down and across the line-up, regardless of price. The pace is accelerating under the watch of Philippe Guigal (no, his father, Marcel, hasn’t gone anywhere, nor has his mother, the omnipresent Bernadette). The domaine has been on an acquisition tear in the south, buying up Domaine de Nalys and Les Clefs d’Or in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, plus a good number of other vineyards in the appellation. Their most recent purchase was the legendary, 98-hectare Château d’Aqueria in Tavel. It’s hard to keep up. As for recent releases, it should come as no surprise that there is excellence throughout the current offerings, which include multiple vintages. The Guigals are extremely cautious about keeping their numerous importers and private clients as happy as possible. The Hermitage and Saint-Joseph bottlings have been on a steep, upward quality climb over the last decade, and, as for the Côte-Rôties, they have, unsurprisingly, not missed a beat, even with the recent hot vintages.