2011 Ermitage Le Pavillon

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."

Chapoutier's long-time commercial director Pierre-Henri Morel characterized 2011 as "a vintage of freshness and forward fruit, with good minerality and vineyard expression" up and down the Rhone Valley. The wines generally don't have the power and concentration to be long agers, he said, but "that's what you buy 2010 and 2009 for. You need vintages like 2011 for drinking young and also fro restaurants, while the vintages like '10, '09 and '05 are for collectors. Like most of the producers that I visited this year Morel emphasized that restaurants are selling wines "younger and younger all over the world, even at the most prestigious ones in France."