Delas : Les Bessards 2019

This is loaded with dark and winey plum sauce, blackberry paste and fig compote flavors that glide through over notes of warm earth, sweet tobacco and anise. A subtle singed alder hint infuses the finish, along with a flicker of violet, while the fruit takes an encore. This shows seriously hefty fruit matched with a terrific underpinning of terroir. For the cellar. Best from 2024 through 2039. Tasted twice, with consistent notes. 583 cases made, 50 cases imported.

Remarkable tannic finesse is immediately apparent, teamed with great freshness, good acidity and deep concentration. There is a great sense of focus and direction and this has that Bessards salinity and straightness. Sweet fruit flavours combine with shoe polish, juniper, sloe, and damson juice. Incredible finesse and seamless character. 3,900 bottles made. Their oldest parcel of lieu-dit Les Bessards, fermented in concrete, then aged for 12 months in new and one-year-old barrels.

Opaque ruby-red. A highly perfumed and expansive bouquet evokes dark berry and cherry preserves, Indian spices, olive and incense; a smoky mineral nuance emerges as the wine opens up. Fleshy and broad on the palate but surprisingly energetic as well, offering intense, mineral-driven black raspberry, boysenberry, kirsch, allspice and licorice flavors, with a suave touch of candied flowers. Finishes chewy, vibrant and impressively long, with resonating florality and youthfully firm tannins that don't detract from the wine's intense fruit.

Always that extra note of blueberry fruit in the vintage, which we find in this 2019. Here the granite hillside has tamed the year’s solar power; it’s still coming together in bottle. Probably a notch above the 2020, but they are so young that we should revisit them in 15 years to truly

Sourced from the oldest plot of Les Bessards in the heart of Hermitage, this limited-production, site-specific Syrah expresses the heat and power of the 2019 vintage with elegance. Massive in structure and richly extracted, it's packed with lip-staining blueberry and cassis flavors. A perfumed lift of violet and lingering notes of smoked tea leaves and vanilla mark the finish. Seductive already, the wine will show best from 2025 to 2040.