After checking-in at Hôtel Fac & Spera de l’Hermitage in Tain-l’Hermitage, Northern Rhône after
Lunch at Restaurant Le Quai (Michelin/ Bib Gourmand) in Tain-l’Hermitage, Northern Rhône - Rhône Valley Tour 2022 by ombiasy WineTours: Wine, Culture and History, France
we spent the afternoon at Paul Jaboulet Aîné.
We met at the Paul Jaboulet Aîné Restaurant in Tain-Hermitage and went from there to the foot of the Hermitage Hill to take a look at the world-famous Hermiatge hill.
After the vineyard walk, we enjoyed a high-end tasting at the Paul Jaboulet Aîné Restaurant/ Tasting Room.
Hermitage/ Wine-searcher
Hermitage is a small appellation with 140 hectares (345 acres) of vineyards, responsible for France's most enduringly prestigious wines. These are on a par with those from the Côte Rôtie (30 miles/45km to the north), and Châteauneuf-du-Pape (70 miles/110km to the south). Both red and white Hermitage wines are long-lived and full-bodied.
The red wines, which may be aged for 30 years or more, are often produced exclusively from Syrah, tough regulations permit up to 15 percent of the white grape varieties Marsanne and Roussanne. They are known for their robustness and rich aromas of leather, coffee and red berries.
The whites are less famous than the reds, but do account for about one third of AOC Hermitage's annual production. They can usually be cellared for about 15 years, have aromas of honeysuckle, tropical fruit and earthy minerals. They are made predominantly from Marsanne, with limited use of Roussanne.
The whole of the granite hillside where the Hermitage vineyards are planted faces south, overlooking a short section where the river Rhône flows west to east, not north to south. This orientation means that the grapes benefit from the maximum amount of sunlight throughout the day. The town of Tain l'Hermitage sits between the vineyard slopes and the water.
The Hermitage zone is bordered to the north by the vineyards of AOC Crozes-Hermitage. These vines are sited in flatter areas, with varying exposures, and the north-facing side of the hill of Hermitage.
The topsoil on the slopes is relatively thin compared to that of the valley floor. There are a wide variety of soil types – ranging from sandy gravel in the west, to rockier areas higher up and limestone in the center. As intense Rhône sunshine warms the hillside during the day, the granite bedrock stores this heat, encouraging the grapes to ripen more fully than those in less-exposed sites. The effect of the local terroir is most pronounced on the western side of the hill; it is steeper than the east and enjoys prolonged exposure to afternoon sunshine.
The appellation is divided into a number of vineyards. Les Bessards is at the western end, while Bessards, Le Méal, Les Greffieux and Murets lie to the east. L'Hermite and La Chapelle take up the top of the slope. The latter is named after a chapel built in honor of Saint Christopher which is owned by the negociant firm Paul Jaboulet Aîné, whose top cuvée is La Chapelle. The appellation takes its name from the legend of the crusading knight Gaspard de Stérimberg, who returned home, wounded, from the Albigensian Crusade in 1224. He was allowed by the Queen of France to build a small refuge on the hillside, where he lived as a hermit.
Jaboulet is one of four producers who rather dominate the appellation in terms of vineyard ownership. Two are also negociant firms; Delas Frères (now owned by Louis Roederer) and M. Chapoutier. The other is Domaine Jean-Louis Chave.
The prestige of Hermitage (sometimes Ermitage) wine can be clearly traced back to the 17th Century, when it was an official wine in the French courts of King Louis XIII and his successor Louis XIV, the "Sun King". Not just the monarchs' preferred wine, it was also used as a gift for visiting dignitaries and foreign royalty. It was no less respected across the English Channel, as confirmed by Thomas Shadwell's comedy of 1680, 'The Woman-Captain'. In the play's opening scene, the wealthy Sir Humphrey and his friend Bellamy cite 'Champaign and Burgundy...and Hermitage' wines as superior to those of 'Langoon and Burdeaux' which they deem suitable only for 'porters and carriers'. Sir Humphrey later boasts 'I do confess I am an epicurean'. The wine's high status remained untouched for a full two centuries after this. It peaked in the mid-19th Century, just as the famous wines of Bordeaux's Médoc were beginning their rise to stardom.
Before the name "Hermitage" was granted international legal protection, it was used by wineries in various regions around the world, valued for its connotations of high quality. A high-profile example is Australia's famous 'Penfolds Bin 95 Grange', which was labeled as 'Grange Hermitage' right up until 1989.
High-end Tasting at Paul Jaboulet Aîné
After the vineyard walk, we enjoyed a high-end tasting at the Paul Jaboulet Aîné Restaurant/ Tasting Room.
Paul Jaboulet Aîné is the smallest of the big négociants businesses of the Rhône region. Jaboulet is a great old name and one of the historic estates in the Rhône. Exactly 100 years before the AOC system was established, in 1834 Antoine Jaboulet began to transform a sleepy region into one of the most important wine regions of the world and Jaboulet has since become a benchmark in the Northern Rhône. The iconic vineyard site “La Chapelle”, visible from afar because of the chapel in the middle of the vineyard high on the Hermitage hill, belongs to Jaboulet.
In 2006 the Frey family, owners of Château La Lagune in the Médoc, acquired Paul Jaboulet Aîné. Since then the Freys have started a forceful expansion, increasing the domaine vineyard sites to almost 300 acres with purchases in the Northern Rhône as well as in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Winemaker Caroline Frey also started converting the domaine vineyards to biodynamic principles and encouraged the growers they buy grapes from to convert to organic or sustainable vineyard management. Jaboulet wines belong once again to the best of the Rhône Valley wines.vv
The Wines we Tasted
We tasted 4 wines.
2017 Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Hermitage, Le Chevalier de Sterimberg (US$ 57)
2017 Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Hermitage, La Petite Chapelle -La Maison Bleu (US$ 63)
2012 Paul Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Hermitage, La Chapelle (US$ 163)
2006 Paul Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Hermitage, La Chapelle (US$ 147)
Paul Jaboulet Aîné/ FICOFI
The firm of Jaboulet was founded in 1834, and today it owns 114.20 hectares of vines in the best appellations of the Rhône Valley, principally in the northern Rhône in Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Cornas, Saint-Joseph and Condrieu, and since 2006 in Côte-Rôtie.
Maison Paul Jaboulet Aîné was created through the magical conjunction of a fertile land on a hillside by the Rhone and a family with a passion for winemaking. In 1834, when Antoine Jaboulet set up his business in Tain l’Hermitage with the aim of producing great wines, he saw his future profession as limited to cultivating the vineyards and maintaining the quality of the land. It was with this mindset that he quickly acquired his first vineyards on the Hermitage slopes and the Crozes-Hermitage plains. The six generations who followed him, including his sons Paul and Henry and, later, the celebrated Gérard, adopted an identical approach. Over the years, Domaines Paul Jaboulet Aîné thereby took ownership of the finest appellations of the northern Rhone Valley. These included Hermitage and Crozes Hermitage, of course, but also Saint-Joseph, Cornas and Saint-Péray.
In 2006, the Freys, a family of long standing in the Champagne region and owners of Château La Lagune in Bordeaux, took over Maison Paul Jaboulet Aîné. Caroline, the eldest daughter of the family, who has a degree in oenology from Bordeaux, works with her team in a single-minded quest for perfection. Their cutting-edge winemaking, combined with the scrupulous care given to vines grown in exceptional terroirs, encourages one to believe that the greatest vintages are yet to come. The vineyards acquired in the appellations of Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu and Châteauneuf-du-Pape are following in the historic Jaboulet tradition.
Under Caroline’s leadership, in 2006, the vineyards earned Sustainable Farming status while Jaboulet's winegrowing is slowly but surely progressing towards biodynamic certification. Horses, winches, cultivators and pickaxes are now used to dig over each plot, however steep. This enables the roots to delve as deeply as possible into the rock. The grapes are rigorously inspected and every last detail is subject to scrupulous examination. Quality is the sole criterion for Caroline and her team of winegrowers.
In this quest for perfection, a new gravity-operated cellar has been set up for the 2010 vintage. Here the grapes are handled with the utmost care. Hand-picked and placed in little crates, two lifts are used to raise the grape bunches. The Roussanne, Marsanne, Viognier and Grenache Blanc white grapes are poured manually into the presses, which then allow the juice to flow naturally through gravity into small stainless steel vats. The fermenting must is then sent to the air-conditioned, humidified white wine store for storage in casks or in enormous 16hl concrete eggs. Meanwhile, the Syrah and Grenache grapes, which are less vulnerable to oxidation, are painstakingly selected on multiple sorting tables (sorting of bunches and then individual grapes) before slipping as gently as possible down to the vats, via lightly sloping stainless steel shafts. When alcoholic and malolactic fermentation is complete, the wines are improved in the spectacular red wine store. Syrah wines gain in complexity in French oak barrels (20% new wood) whereas Grenache is better suited to aging in truncated cone-shaped 80hl vats.
The jewel in the Jaboulet collection has always been the legendary ‘La Chapelle’ Hermitage, a great red wine made purely from Syrah, which owes its name to the famous little Saint Christophe chapel, which overlooks the Hermitage vineyards. ‘La Chapelle’, which has been solely owned by Paul Jaboulet Aîné since 1919, is made by blending grapes from the best terroirs in the appellation (Méal, les Bessards, les Rocoules etc.). ‘La Chapelle’ Hermitage 1961 has been ranked among the twelve greatest wines of the 20th century and it racked up the third highest price ever recorded worldwide for a 12-bottle lot sold by Christie’s.
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