April 12-13
After our time in Alsace, we were ready to broaden our horizons away from all the wine tastings… to more wine tastings. But we were switching from deliciously dry whites to deliciously complex reds. Variety is the spice of life. We drove southwest to Hermitage, a small hill in the northern Rhône region that is known for exceptional Syrah. This was another area that the documentary, “Somm, Into the Bottle”, had directed us towards.
Some interesting history about Hermitage. The wine region surrounding Hermitage is quite large, but wines labeled exclusively “Hermitage’ speak to 140 hectares of vines on a south facing hill outside Lyon, France. According to legend, an injured knight in 1224 was given permission by the Queen of France to live on the hill while he recovered. That knight never left his hill and lived as a hermit – hence the name hermitage. However, at a winery we visited, the man doing the tasting talked about a battle between Gaul and the Romans in 121 BC (thank you google for that year). Apparently the Celts (had no idea of the Celt/Gaul connection) had significantly more troops than the Romans, but the Romans brought elephants which where incredibly exotic at the time and terrified the Celts. The Celts fled via a bridge they had constructed over the Rhône and the bridge collapsed, killing a large number of the troops. The hill was then apparently given to a Roman commander as reward and he began farming the hill.
The hill:
Now about the wines. We tasted wine from the region and wine specifically from the hill. The stuff on the hill – the Hermitage appellation – is significantly better. And that analysis is from someone who likes drinking wine but would not call herself an expert by any means. I struggle to define what I’m tasting when I taste it. I’m getting better (practice makes perfect), but for the most part, I can only tell you what I like. I like Hermitage wines. So apparently the five tasting notes of a standard Syrah is cherry, leather, pepper, licorice, and a fifth one. We don’t remember what the fifth tasting note is from our tasting yesterday. It may be lavender, but whatever it was, I was surprised that he said it and I don’t think I have ever picked that out. Definitely cherry, definitely pepper… and the rest? I’ll trust the experts on what they think. But I can tell you, with my limited experience, that when you taste a Hermitage wine next to wine produced from the next appellation over that the Hermitage is noticeably better.
Of the 140 hectares, a quarter are Marsanne and Roussanne white varieties. These are wines we had never tried before this visit. They were fine – but tough when compared to how good the Syrah is and how good the whites were that we had just tasted in Alsace.
On to the Syrah – it is bold and spicy and wonderful. The hill has granite soil with alpine glacial deposits. This produces heavy tannic wines which allow them to be aged for a long time. We drank mostly 2014 and 2015 vintages and both wineries told us we could keep them in a cellar for 10-30 years. That’s a long time.
We visited three wineries while in the area. The first was actually the same winery of the bottle we drank in Alsace – Domaine Des Remiziéres. We had the 2005 Cuvée Emilie and were pumped when we met… Emilie.
She is the winemaker’s daughter and did the tasting for us. Without a common language between the three of us, it was a quiet, but delicious tasting. Google translator did its job more than a few times to get through the 30 or 40 minutes. She did recommend a few other wineries for us to visit in the area.
We headed directly to one of her suggestions in St. Joseph – Domaine Pierre et Jerome Coursodon. St. Joseph is the next appellation over and this tasting was proof that the wines were just not as good as the Hermitage. They were fine, really delicious, but we had been spoiled now.
The following day, Michael found Delas, a small producer of Hermitage for us to visit. The guide spoke English, which was great because he had a lot of information for us. Besides the history that he shared regarding the area, we also got a (slightly snobbish) opinion of new age wines. Basically, if it isn’t French or tastes just like French, this guy isn’t a fan. It made me laugh on the inside as he was telling us this. Michael does not agree with how I remember this part of the tasting. It wasn’t a big deal and I liked the guy a lot, but I thought it was a peak into a bit of the old world wine snobbery.
So we now have a new issue: how are we going to ship about nine bottles of wine back to the states. None of the Hermitage or Alsace wineries would ship for us, so we didn’t buy much, but we did buy a few. It is too much to ask anyone to carry back after a visit, so we’re going to try to ship over the next week or so.
One food item to mention: we had lunch yesterday at a pizza place. We ordered a pizza to share and an arugula salad. The salad came with a 8″ by 4″ pastry baked to soft perfection and filled with melted cheese. That’s what we get for trying to order something halfway healthy for lunch. It was an amazing surprise.
I’m typing this while we’re driving South to Seville. It is a 13 or so hour drive, so we are stopping after 9 hours for two nights North of Valencia, Spain. As of right now, my weather app is telling me that we’re going to get sun and 70 degrees in this beach town, so I’m looking forward to sitting on the beach tomorrow and doing nothing.
The roads from Hermitage to Valencia are mostly highway and not that much different than views you’d see in California, but one thing is different… the rest stop food.
This is the croissant we had this morning for breakfast. 1 Euro and it tasted as good as anything we’d had in a real restaurant. How do they get their rest stop food so fresh?! No McDonald’s breakfast burritos here. (Editor’s note: McDonald’s breakfast burritos are delicious and I love them).