Barruol / Lynch - Crozes Hermitage Les Tiercerolles

 

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Producer	Barruol / Lynch
Country	France
Region	Rhone Valley
Subregion	Crozes Hermitage
Varietal	Syrah
Sku	10908
Size	750ml

Louis Barruol sources this Crozes from granite hillside plots that yield deep, chewy reds with concentrated aromas of smoke, black fruit, and graphite.- Wine.com

Over forty years of doing business in France and Italy have given Kermit Lynch a level of expertise that few in the wine industry can boast. Countless hours with growers in some of the most famous vineyards and cellars of Europe have offered more than just a casual look at what it takes to be a great grower, let alone a great winemaker. Kermit Lynch was the first to champion the benefits of unfined and unfiltered wines, long before they had become fashionable. This belief is really a matter of taste, and the proof has always been in the glass, offering a purer expression of fruit and an unadulterated reflection of the terroir. Kermit’s conviction has been so strong over the years that he has been able to persuade even the most hard-headed vignerons to test his theories.

Long-term relationships with vignerons in every major wine growing region offer a tremendous array of opportunities. Every year, Kermit enjoys a creative collaboration with some growers to find the best of their selections. Together, they work towards creating a final blend that showcases the region in all its glory at a price point that is difficult to match.
 

Louis Barruol is an indefatigable force in the Rhône. He is the fourteenth generation in his family to be making wine at his sixteenth-century domaine in Gigondas. On what was once the site of a Roman villa, Louis’ cellars show spectacular remains of old, Roman vinification vats carved into the limestone.

While based in the southern Rhône, Louis is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about the great Syrahs grown farther north—a passion he discovered he shares with Kermit, who over the decades has worked with some of Louis' northern Rhône idols including Marius Gentaz, Raymond Trollat, and Auguste Clape. In an homage to these legendary vignerons and the increasingly rare style of traditional winemaking they practiced, Louis became a micro-négociant, working closely with top growers in the northern Rhône who still work with Sérine, an ancient clone of Syrah known for its aromatic finesse. Producing only a few precious barrels of each cuvée, Louis is helping to save the authenticity and the identity of many great old Côte Rôtie parcels, as well as those of Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, and occasionally Saint-Joseph, by keeping them out of the hands of the large, corporate négociants in the area.

Together, he and Kermit blend our northern Rhône wines from a selection of Louis’ purchased fruit. Louis selects the best parcels he can find based on his intimate knowledge of the region’s terroirs, and upon bringing the grapes in his cellar gives them the traditional treatment of spontaneous fermentation without destemming, aging in barrel, and bottling without filtration. Once a year, Kermit shows up and either chooses to have a cuvée bottled unfiltered, or he blends to find the assemblage that satisfies his aesthetic criteria.

Opaque ruby. High-pitched black and blue fruit, violet candy and cracked pepper aromas are complicated by a smoky mineral nuance that gains power as the wine opens up. Intense blackberry and blueberry flavors show impressive depth as well as energy and spicy back-end lift. Closes very long and appealingly sweet, with resonating mineral character driving a youthfully tannic finish.