1998 Hermitage Rouge, Domaine Bernard Chave
This wine is from the other Chave in Hermitage. I'd known about the domaine, but never seen any of its wines in the US. We visited this domaine on a tasting trip up the Rhone valley. Tasting some of the younger wines from bottle, I could see why nobody imports it. They all had a weird, funky quality that reminded me of a Biology lab hay infusion. However, tasting the 1998 Crozes-Hermitage and Hermitage from barrel, they were clean and very impressive. The Burgundy Cellar decided to bring them in. I bought six bottles of each. Opening one of each when they arrived, we were dismayed to find that same hay infusion fault. I don't know what Bernard Chave does during his bottling process, but apparently it introduces this problem. So the remaining bottles sat in my cellar. At about 10 years after the vintage, I opened another of the Crozes, and was delighted to find out that the hay infusion element, whatever it was, had completely cleared away. What was left was a very find Crozes-Hermitage indeed. I've since drunk all those up.
I opened one of the 1998 Hermitages the other day. The color was very deep and startlingly young-looking. On the nose, no hay infusion. Instead lovely, bountiful syrah aromas of dark fruits and smoke. The intense flavors follow the aromas. There's still some ripe tannins and acidity to be resolved here, and the finish is a bit subdued. While enjoyable now, this wine clearly isn't fully mature yet and will be better in another five years, or maybe even a couple of decades. Double Curly, with a touch of Moe.
Bernard Chave clearly makes wines in an old-school, rustic style, designed for the long haul and making no concessions to impatient drinkers. The results are very impressive, if you wait the wines out. If you dote on bouncy, international wines, run away and hide.
-Paul W.