Michel Chapoutier inherited a Rhône house that made reliable wine and not much excitement. He took the reins in 1990, and within a year had begun converting the vineyards to biodynamic farming, unusual for a producer of that scale. He also started doing the one thing most Rhône growers never do with their best hill: taking it apart instead of blending it.
Hermitage rises as a single hill behind the town of Tain, but its slopes cross several distinct soils and exposures. Most houses fold all of it into one Hermitage bottling. Chapoutier instead vinifies the top parcels on their own, so l'Ermite and Le Méal each reach the bottle as separate wines. Several of these single-parcel Ermitage cuvées have been scored a perfect hundred by critics, a mark a blended wine rarely reaches.
M. Chapoutier
Chapoutier reads his labels differently too. In 1994 he added Braille to the Monier de la Sizeranne Hermitage, named for a nineteenth-century Frenchman who refined a form of the script, and within two years every bottle the house made carried it. That choice has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with who gets to shop for wine without help.
For a drinker, the lesson sits on the label. Chapoutier's bottles often name the exact patch of hillside rather than just the appellation, a promise that the wine tastes of one place instead of an average of several. Syrah is the grape doing the talking here, but the address is the point.
Rhône Valley
