2013 Ermitage Blanc L'Ermite

Chapoutier's winemaker Clément Bärtschi, who guided the usual marathon tasting for me here, said that one thing he'd like to see change is that “people drink these wines, especially the top white ones, so young." The problem, as he sees it, is that “when you open them before they've had at least a year in the bottle, and even more for the reds, what you see is the variety, not the place." So a newly released Condrieu "tastes like Viognier more than where it's from, which is what people are paying for, hopefully." The converse is true as well, he continued, "because old wines can start to merge together stylistically. The challenge is how to catch the wine at the ideal point of freshness and maturity."

My annual tasting marathon at Chapoutier (more than 100 wines from the north and south!) was conducted by assistant winemaker Clément Bärtschi, who is especially enthused by the increasing quality of wines, both red and white, that have been emerging from Saint-Joseph in recent years. "You get everything that you want in the best parts of the appellation," which to him is the area surrounding Saint-Jean de Muzols and Mauve: "granite soils, steep south-facing slopes and old Serine vines." Like a number of his colleagues Clement views Saint-Joseph as "a little Hermitage, and the wines are more approachable, which gives them a larger audience. The prices help, too." The Chapoutier team is pleased by the healthy yields of 2013 and 2012 and, as was repeated to me across the region, they think that having plenty of wine to sell will help to mitigate the pain of the short crop of 2014.