2015 - Hermitage Les Bessards, Delas

With approximately 500 cases produced, the 2015 Hermitage les Bessards is probably among the most available of the vintage's top wines. Jump on it if your means allow, as I suspect this wine will be a candidate for perfection once it sheds some tannin. It's perfumed on the nose, concentrated on the palate and amazingly long yet also elegant from start to finish. And amid the power, oak and massive cassis and blackberry fruit, it also manages to include hints of crushed stone evocative of its granitic terroir. It's breathtaking stuff, virtually guaranteed to bring a smile to any wine lover's face.

Inky ruby. A highly aromatic bouquet evokes candied black and blue fruits, along with complicating suggestions of smoky minerals, candied flowers, olive and vanilla. Deep, chewy and expansive in the mouth, offering impressively concentrated dark berry liqueur, fruitcake and salty olive flavors that are complicated by a hint of smoky minerality and a building floral pastille note. Distinctly rich and powerful but surprisingly graceful as well, showing noteworthy clarity and mineral-driven thrust on the strikingly long finish.

Cask sample. Tasted blind. Purplish, very dense crimson. Real energy and some cool force bubbling up under the fruit. Minty and quite suave. Still a baby and like a taut spring but convincing. (JR)