Now, I am one to view any empirically derived rule with a jaundiced eye, so with the arrival of my birthday on Friday, I decided the put BJ’s Rule of 15 to a test. To do this, I pulled from the cellar my last bottle of Compagnie de l’Hermitage 2010 Hermitage Cuvée Des Moines. I’d started in on my 4 bottles of back in 2019, so have a six-year perspective on how this wine evolved:
January 19, 2019 - Dark fruit, licorice, roasted meat developing with air. Not the most complex or deep example of Hermitage, but also doesn't bear the price tag of Chave. It'll almost certainly get better over the next decade.
May 9, 2021 - Pure Syrah fruit, resolved tannins, modest acidity. Very pretty but primary. I'm not sure that this wine has the structure to age for another decade, so I'm unsure whether it'll ever develop much tertiary character.
May 11, 2022 - Not much change from the last bottle. Still, resolved tannins and classic Syrah fruit, but it fails to wow me. If someone told me it was a top Crozes, I don’t think I’d disagree. I’ll let my remaining bottle sit for a few years to see how it develops.
June 7, 2025 - By far, the best showing for this wine yet. More savory now, still with a solid core of fruit, it’s showing clear signs of developing tertiary character. Medium-full in body with plenty of acidity and fine-grained tannins, it is well suited for service with red meat (in our case, venison tenderloin) and has clear N Rhone character.
So, yes, at age 15 it sits right at the cusp of shedding most of its fruity character and entering into a more savory stage of its existence. I don’t have enough firsthand experience (my last bottle being a ‘99 Chave that I won as part of Dale Williams’s Katrina benefit in ‘04) with Hermitage to opine on whether any of those bottles showed that degree of a sense of place, but they clearly were N Rhone.
I’m still not sure about the Rule of 15 with regard to any other grape, so more research is definitely warranted.
Mark Lipton
January 19, 2019 - Dark fruit, licorice, roasted meat developing with air. Not the most complex or deep example of Hermitage, but also doesn't bear the price tag of Chave. It'll almost certainly get better over the next decade.
May 9, 2021 - Pure Syrah fruit, resolved tannins, modest acidity. Very pretty but primary. I'm not sure that this wine has the structure to age for another decade, so I'm unsure whether it'll ever develop much tertiary character.
May 11, 2022 - Not much change from the last bottle. Still, resolved tannins and classic Syrah fruit, but it fails to wow me. If someone told me it was a top Crozes, I don’t think I’d disagree. I’ll let my remaining bottle sit for a few years to see how it develops.
June 7, 2025 - By far, the best showing for this wine yet. More savory now, still with a solid core of fruit, it’s showing clear signs of developing tertiary character. Medium-full in body with plenty of acidity and fine-grained tannins, it is well suited for service with red meat (in our case, venison tenderloin) and has clear N Rhone character.
So, yes, at age 15 it sits right at the cusp of shedding most of its fruity character and entering into a more savory stage of its existence. I don’t have enough firsthand experience (my last bottle being a ‘99 Chave that I won as part of Dale Williams’s Katrina benefit in ‘04) with Hermitage to opine on whether any of those bottles showed that degree of a sense of place, but they clearly were N Rhone.
I’m still not sure about the Rule of 15 with regard to any other grape, so more research is definitely warranted.
Mark Lipton
