Delas Hermitage Les Bessards (1.5 Liter Magnum) 2017
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The Hermitage "Les Bessards" is named after a sub-region of the Hermitage appellation, where the steeply terraced hillside vineyards have an excellent southwestern exposure. Those vineyards produce some of the world’s most intense, dense wines from the rich Syrah varietal. Delas owns 25 acres in this prized region, a large amount by Rhône standards. This cuvée is a vineyard plot selection. The grapes come exclusively fromthe oldest plot within the renowned area of "Les Bessards" in the heart of the Hermitage slopes. This wine is only produced during the very best years and the production is deliberately limited to 6,000 bottles per year.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Archetypal Les Bessards, the Delas 2017 Hermitage Les Bessards boasts rich, deep cassis fruit accented by hints of crushed stone and pencil shavings. It's full-bodied, ripe yet firm, with great energy, freshness and length on the spice-tinged finish. While relatively approachable young, it should age well for up to two decades. Tasted twice (once blind), with one bottle showing more peppery spice, red berries and cured-meat notes.
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Wine Enthusiast
Deep, undulating layers of cassis and mulberry are shaded by hints of cinnamon, charred meat and coffee bean in this hulking Syrah. It's a rich, plushly textured sip but gripped by a firm, penetrating frame of tannins. Stunning but a bit unwieldy in youth, it would be best cellared till 2022, but the wine will reward patience.
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Wine Spectator
A sleek, mineral-edged version, with black cherry and black currant puree flavors streaming through, laced with singed mesquite notes, a flash of iron and a lingering sanguine echo. Restrained in style but not lacking energy, delivering a nice piercing feel at the very end. Best from 2020 through 2032.
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James Suckling
This is set in darker fruit tones with a rich and ripe plum and blackberry core, as well as graphite and sarsaparilla. Some hung meat and suave oak spices. The palate has very vertical, mouth-filling presence and a very bright, clear and vibrant style that delivers a long, sweetly spiced blackberry and black-cherry core. Try from 2025.
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Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
One of the smallest and most important Syrah regions of northern Rhone, Hermitage is practically one single south-facing slope of crushed granite, thinly covered with varied, yet well-charted soil types. Many climats (well identified parcels) exist within Hermitage and while some smaller producers make single climat Syrahs, some larger ones blend to make one balanced expression of the appellation.
Though the AC regulations allow the addition of up to 15% white grapes to a red Hermitage, in practice it is usually made from Syrah alone. Winemaking is pretty traditional—or you might say historic—with hot fermentations and aging in older barrels of various sizes. The best wines, characterized by deep, dense and sexy flavors of black fruit, cocoa, licorice and tobacco, have massive textures and a solid 10-20 years aging potential.
The region of Hermitage is totally enclosed; the only place it could go really is to literally fall down its own hill into the city of Tain or the Rhone River. Soil erosion is a problem and terraces exist alongside the hill in order to keep the earth in place. Crozes-Hermitage encloses the region entirely to its north and south.
While Hermitage seems synonymous with some of the best Syrah on the planet, actually about one third of the wine produced here comes from white grapes. The full, lush and robust Marsanne or the less common, but almost more charming, Roussanne create wonderful whites in which the best have great potential for aging, like the reds.