2018 Crozes-Hermitage Les Meysonniers

Maxime Chapoutier and cellarmaster Clément Bärtschi called 2018 “a kind of interesting vintage because while the wines are ripe, as has become usual, they also have sound acidity, so there isn’t a cooked quality or too much weight, like you get from typical hot years.” The wines are fresher than their 2017 siblings, they said, adding that “they’ll be drinking sooner than the 2017s, which have more weight and structure and also darker fruit character. Those should be held.”

I tasted this year with Maxime Chapoutier and cellarmaster Clément Bärtschi, who described 2017 as a year of “really nice fruit, just not very much of it.” The wines are definitely richer than the 2016s here and reminded me a bit of the 2015s, but with less strict tannins and somewhat darker fruit character. For obvious reasons, there’s even less of the small-production, single-vineyard wines to go around than usual and, since they have yet to hit US shores, at least via the official importer, getting dibs in early is highly advised, because they are outstanding. If the top four Hermitage bottlings are too rich for your blood, then it’s worth finding the Hermitage Monier de Sizeranne, Saint-Joseph Les Granits and Le Clos and the always excellent Crozes-Hermitage Les Varonniers, which gives many a Hermitage a run for their money. The production levels for those wines are small as well, but they don’t grab the market’s immediate attention the same way as the big-gun Hermitages. Chapoutier has long been doing noteworthy work at Côte-Rôtie and has highly enviable holdings there. That fact seems to be overlooked, such is the domaine’s deeply rooted history in Tain l’Hermitage and its surrounding vineyards. Luckily, and perhaps as a result, pricing can be extremely fair for these wines given their consistently high quality.