2015 M. Chapoutier Ermitage Le Meal
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Note di degustazione
Dark purple. An exotically perfumed bouquet evokes mineral-accented black and blue fruit preserves and incense, and a sexy floral element gains strength with air. Fleshy, seamless and sweet, offering densely packed blueberry, cherry liqueur, spicecake and floral pastille flavors enlivened by a spine of juicy acidity. The floral note repeats emphatically on the impressively long, youthfully tannic finish, which leaves behind smoky mineral and blue fruit notes.
Punteggi della critica
Tim Atkin MW
Joe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate
Altre recensioni e punteggi
A perfect wine, the 2015 Ermitage Le Méal offers straight-up otherworldly notes of black raspberries, toasted spices, licorice, scorched earth and flowers. With a huge, unctuous profile on the palate, a stacked mid-palate, sweet, sweet tannin and awesome purity, it's as good as it gets. This cuvée is always one of the more forward, sexy wines in the lineup, but it still needs 4-6 years of bottle age and will keep for 2-3 decades. Enough can’t be said about the quality coming from the estate of Michel Chapoutier. Taking over the domaine from his father in the late 1980s (his first vintage was 1989), Michel quickly moved the estate completely to bio-dynamic farming as well as building a new, state of the art winery located just outside of Tain l’Hermitage. These are classic, traditionally made wines that are never acidified (or chaptalized), are brought up mostly in demi-muids (with plenty of used oak), and bottled unfined and unfiltered. He also continues to grow the brand (this is easily one of the largest tastings I do every year from a single producer) and has added two new Côte Rôties in 2015, the Quatrain and Neve cuvees. The Quatrain is reserved for grapes that didn’t make it into the selection parcellaire releases, and the Neve comes from a single parcel in the northern part of the appellation. Both are impressive wines, although I don’t envy anyone trying to explain the full portfolio to buyers in the market. In addition, while it’s easy to focus on the top cuvées from this estate, the portfolio is packed with incredible values at just about every price point. These reviews focus on the 2015 and 2016 vintages, with all the 2015s tasted out of bottle and the majority of the 2016s still resting in barrel. The 2015 vintage is a monumental one for this estate and matches (and in a few cases, eclipses) what was accomplished in 2009 and 2010. These are ripe, concentrated, structured wines that are going to demand cellar time. In contrast, the 2016s are more elegant and silky, with terrific purity of fruit. They don’t have the sheer grandeur of fruit found in the 2015s, yet are seriously concentrated and have no shortage of tannins and structure.
When in the course of a tasting session one is confronted by a wine that stands above the others, I find it impossible to give more than a single perfect score. So the 2015 Ermitage le Meal gets a "consolation prize" 99+ rating. Full-bodied and intense, loaded with blackberry fruit that pushes the limits of ripeness and richness, this incredible wine retains such fine details as hints of crushed stone, cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. Unless it shuts down, it should be drinkable by 2025 and give pleasure for many years to come.
Bright magenta. A complex, hugely perfumed bouquet evokes ripe red and blue fruits, incense, candied violet and Moroccan spices, and a subtle vanilla flourish emerges as the wine opens up. Energetic, palate-staining raspberry liqueur, cherry pie, floral pastille and spicecake flavors show impressive depth and vivacity. Supple, even tannins build steadily on the penetrating finish, which eventually leaves behind notes of star anise and red fruit preserves.