2017 Ermitage Le Pavillon

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.

Winemaker Clément Bärtschi described 2017 as “showing its hot-vintage and low-yield character but it doesn’t act like a typical hot year because there’s very good energy, freshness and detail, too.” He compared the aromatics of the wines to the 2016s “because they have expressive perfume and show a lot of mineral character, but they are much more powerful than the 2016s, with darker fruit character.” It was a really strange year for growing conditions, he pointed out “early start, then cold and dry, then hot again, then lots of rain, then dry again. You were always watching the vines because of all the changes.” Luckily, he said, there was no disease pressure and the fruit was “exceptionally healthy” and benign weather allowed the harvest to stretch from mid-September well into October, “picking when the fruit was ready, not when the weather said to go faster.” Long-time fans of Chapoutier will have noticed a trend toward less extraction and more silky mouthfeels in the wines here and that shows, again, even in the ripe 2017 vintage.