2012 Ermitage L'Ermite

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.

Since I visited the Chapoutier winery in mid-November, longtime Managing Director Pierre-Henri Morel has moved on to oversee international sales for Australia's Two Hands winery in the Barossa Valley, and moved with his family to Australia as well. Morel has been the public face of the sprawling Chapoutier wine empire since 2000 and every Chapoutier wine that I have tasted for the IWC has been with him, so his departure will make things interesting for my next visit to Tain. Morel described the 2012 reds as "a bit like 2010 in the sense that the wines have structure and will age, but the fruit is more forward and the tannins less strict." He went on: "Even though the wines are two years younger than the '10s they should probably, with few exceptions, be drunk before you get into any but the entry-level wines of the earlier vintage because the tannins in '10 demand patience; the wines will not show themselves as well as they should until they're at least seven or eight years old, maybe older." He also believes that 2011 will provide some surprises as the wines mature "because the best have balance and freshness: they won't make a huge statement like '12, '10 and '09 but they should age smoothly and never really close up." The white wines from 2012 "are exceptional and made to age," he added, while the best '11 whites "are like the reds in that they have the balance to age but will probably be at their best on the young side, except for the Hermitages."