M. Chapoutier, Hermitage, l'Ermite Blanc 2011

Always more dense, backward and focused, the 2011 Ermitage L'Ermite Blanc has everything I could want out of a white. Flower oil, apricot, honeysuckle, brioche, powdered rock and assorted tropical notes are just some of the nuances here, and this incredible wine is full-bodied and massive, yet elegant, fresh and delineated. Count yourself lucky if you're able to latch onto a couple of these!

The rigorous, more austere 2011 Ermitage l’Ermite Blanc boasts an amazing terroir character with a backward style. A masterpiece in the making, it displays crystalline purity along with extraordinary notes of acacia flowers, quince, honey, wet rocks and candle wax. This amazing, full-bodied, concentrated white is the essence of a single vineyard as well as of Marsanne. 

In November of this year, Michel Chapoutier finally made the cover of The Wine Spectator. The accompanying article said essentially the same things I had written about over twenty years ago. More importantly, I am thrilled that Chapoutier received this attention because it has long been deserved. History will record that Michel Chapoutier is a revolutionary. He is also a highly emotional man whose infectious love of primitive art, historic books, classical music and, of course, terroir and winemaking are seemingly impossible to harness. Michel Chapoutier was among the first in France to embrace the radical biodynamic agricultural teachings, for which he was initially criticized, but is now praised. He was also the first to print all his labels in Braille, something that cynics considered to be a gimmick, but ask the National Association for the Blind what they think. Coming from a famous family, but moving in a direction unlike any of its previous members, Michel Chapoutier is self-taught. What he has accomplished over the last two decades or more is one of the great wine stories of the modern era.