Walls: Tasting the first five vintages of Delas’ Hermitage ‘Ligne de Crête’

Hermitage is an ancient appellation that doesn’t change much, mainly because it doesn’t need to. However, it is still capable of the occasional new trick.

It is not often you find producers releasing novel Hermitage cuvées. This one from Delas, a house making big strides of late, is particularly interesting.

Scroll down for Matt Walls’ tasting notes and scores for the first five vintages of Ligne de Crête

New kid on the block

Ligne de Crête (ridge line) is the name of their new single-vineyard red Hermitage. It comes from a lieu-dit that hasn’t, to my knowledge, been bottled as a single vineyard before: lieu-dit Les Grandes Vignes.

Reaching an altitude of 325m, this is the pinnacle of Hermitage hill’s granitic western flank, facing south and southwest and sitting even higher than lieu-dit L’Hermite.

As the mother rock gradually weathers, it washes down the hill, so the soil here is particularly thin. Delas owns 2.6ha of this lieu-dit, which is nearly all of it.

The inception of Ligne de Crête

This large negociant house, owned by Champagne Louis Roederer, has been producing a single-vineyard Hermitage, Les Bessards, since 1990. They only started bottling Ligne de Crête in 2015. The idea of a new cuvée, however, had been bubbling away since 2010.

Senior winemaker Claire Darnaud works in tandem with chief winemaker Jacques Grange. Darnaud explains that they have long picked promising Hermitage plots separately. These are vinified side by side before blending and bottling under their Domaine des Tourettes label.

‘The idea was to keep them apart to get an idea of the full potential of the wines,’ she notes. The 2010 vintage was the first time the Grandes Vignes parcel caught their eye. ‘I remember it vividly,’ she says.

Discovering its potential

Tasting through the different barrels with Grange, they looked at each other suddenly, knowing they were both tasting something special.

They kept a close eye on the parcel. Convinced of its style and quality, they bottled a little in 2013 to see how it developed. Darnaud and Grange were then given the go-ahead to produce commercial quantities from the 2015 vintage.

‘We never looked back,’ insists Darnaud. ‘We feel that it’s like a Burgundian Hermitage,’ she adds, ‘it has a vibrancy we think might be linked to the altitude as well as the sheer granite rock.’

Comparing the single-vineyard wines

Les Bessards, the other single-vineyard cuvée from Delas, is from the same hunk of granite but from much lower down the hill. Stylistically, however, she believes they are yin and yang.

‘Les Bessards is broad-shouldered, smoky and brooding,’ Darnaud explains, ‘with very structured dark fruit aromatics, not showing itself until much later’.

In comparison she says Ligne de Crête is tight, focused, long, mineral and airy, with a fine, vibrant elegance.

Despite the marked difference in style, the wines follow a similar path from vine to bottle. Both cuvées are 100% Syrah, fully destemmed and vinified in small concrete or stainless-steel tanks for around three weeks.

But when it comes to élevage, there is an important distinction.

Oaking decisions

Both cuvées spend around 20 months in 225L French oak barriques (around 30% of which are new), but the source of the barrels is not the same.

For Les Bessards, Bordeaux coopers are preferred in order to ‘underline the smoky, dark fruit characteristics that it already has naturally,’ says Darnaud.

To mature Ligne de Crête on the other hand, they opt for Burgundian coopers such as Chassin, which they find better accentuates its innate finesse.

Elegance and consistency

I’ve been following the evolution of this new cuvée since its inception, and I recently tasted the 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 side by side. I also tasted a barrel sample of the 2019 last October.

The stylistic thread is consistent and easily discernible. There are few Hermitage wines quite as gentle and elegant as Ligne de Crête. It is remarkably approachable when young.

I’ve regretted opening young bottles of Hermitage in the past, finding them closed and surly with ungainly tannins. That is not the case with any of the first five vintages of this new cuvée.

Ligne de Crête’s defining features

It is lighter in concentration than much red Hermitage, and its tannic texture is far from thick; it is more like fine sand or cat’s fur. Its relative lack of concentration might raise questions of longevity. But in most vintages this wine displays strength of character, freshness and balance which, if anything, are more important.

Since this cuvée is so approachable when young, the real question is whether many bottles will remain unconsumed for long enough for it to reveal its full potential.

Those who enjoy Hermitage with muscle and grunt might be better off looking at other options – this sits at the other end of the scale, and is thus an unusual Hermitage in that regard.

But this is a worthy new addition to the Hermitage pantheon, and one that I look forward to tasting when it is fully mature.

Tasting Delas’ Ligne de Crête 2015-2019:

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