All wines
Boris
René-Jean Dard et François Ribo
Hermitage
2019
4.4
Region
France › Rhône › Northern Rhône › Hermitage › Hermitage AOC
Type
red · still
Grapes
Syrah
Alcohol
14.5%
Volume
750 mL
Tasting Notes(1)
4.4
Oh, this is gorgeous. Complex and multilayered from the first lift, the blackberry leaning toward semi-dried with proper concentration behind it. Almost none of the vegetal register that ran through the lineup makes it here - maybe a flicker, no more. Properly clean. Silky on the palate, round through the middle, the barrel sweetness landing exactly where it needs to without taking over. Long, seamless, one beat flowing into the next without the joints showing. Drinks like nectar - and that's not flattery, that's the actual texture. Beautiful style.
About
The estate's most exclusive bottling: Syrah from a tiny holding on the Hill of Hermitage itself - Dard et Ribo own roughly half a hectare across the lieu-dit Varogne (very old vines, some from around 1910) and a small slice of Les Murets. Unlike the Crozes and Saint-Joseph rouges, the Hermitage bunches are mostly destemmed (around 90%) - the small whole-cluster remainder kicks off the spontaneous fermentation. Ageing runs over a year in 500-litre barrels. No filtration, effectively no added SO2. Production is tiny - on the order of a thousand bottles in a normal year. The 2019 vintage's heat and structure should carry this for decades.
