2011 Hermitage La Petite Chapelle

Owner/winemaker Caroline Frey described 2012 as "2010 but on a smaller scale, with less pronounced tannins, which will make the wines accessible much earlier."She added that 2011 is similar in many ways to 2006, which she said has turned out especially well for the white wines, and she believes that the reds, like their 2006 siblings, "can age better than people think but will be on point at about seven to ten years old, except for the most serious wines."The '11s won't die a quick death, she feels, "but it will probably be safe to drink them young, when the fruit is being emphasized."The Jaboulet wines show a distinctly more polished character since the Frey family bought the winery in 2006, and it must be noted that Caroline, the 30-something daughter of Jean-Jacques Frey, is hardly acting as a figurehead here.She received the diploma of oenologue at the viticultural university in Reims (one of only five colleges in France that confer this advanced degree) and makes her home for most of the year across the Rhone, near Tournon, where she is raising her family. Working alongside co-winemaker Jacques Desnervois, Frey has brought a standard of consistent high quality back to this venerable producer, which is something that had been missing for many years.

Winemaker Jacques Desvernois told me that 2011 got off to an auspicious start thanks to heavy winter snows that replenished the groundwater (a serious concern in the Rhone in recent years), followed by "summer-like" weather in March that pushed budbreak ten days ahead of normal.It was also quite dry but the healthy water levels helped to compensate and as temperatures stayed high the vines were a full 15 days ahead of schedule by the first of June.Conditions held nicely untilthe completely out-of-whack July, "which seemed like March or April," with cold and damp weather "that applied the brakes to maturity."Temperatures crept back up in August but not dramatically, and the season was still over a week ahead of schedule, allowing harvesting to start on September 6 in Crozes and winding up on the 27th at Cornas.Desnervois observed that "the diurnal shifts in 2010 were remarkable up and down the Rhone," pointing out that such conditions allowed the harvest to extend until the very end of October "without having to deal with the drought and heat issues of 2009."The "homogeneous" level of quality across the region is unprecedented, in Jacques' opinion, "which is the true mark of great vintage, where wines at every level are often better than anything before them."