2015 St Joseph Les Granilites

Opaque ruby. Highly perfumed red/blue fruit, spicecake and floral pastille aromas pick up a smoky mineral accent with air. Fresh blueberry, blackberry and allspice flavors are energized and sharpened by a spine of juicy acidity. Distinctly lively in style, finishing alluringly sweet and quite long; fine-grained tannins make a late appearance.

Next up, the 2015 Saint Joseph Les Granilites comes all from the southern part of the appellation, from parcels around Mauve, Tournon and Saint-Jean-de-Muzols. Aged in equal parts concrete and barrel, it offers clean, classic Syrah notes of black fruits (blackberries, currants) and peppery herbs, medium to full-bodied richness, a silky texture, no hard edges, and a great finish. Drink it through 2027. Enough can’t be said about the quality coming from the estate of Michel Chapoutier. Taking over the domaine from his father in the late 1980s (his first vintage was 1989), Michel quickly moved the estate completely to bio-dynamic farming as well as building a new, state of the art winery located just outside of Tain l’Hermitage. These are classic, traditionally made wines that are never acidified (or chaptalized), are brought up mostly in demi-muids (with plenty of used oak), and bottled unfined and unfiltered. He also continues to grow the brand (this is easily one of the largest tastings I do every year from a single producer) and has added two new Côte Rôties in 2015, the Quatrain and Neve cuvees. The Quatrain is reserved for grapes that didn’t make it into the selection parcellaire releases, and the Neve comes from a single parcel in the northern part of the appellation. Both are impressive wines, although I don’t envy anyone trying to explain the full portfolio to buyers in the market. In addition, while it’s easy to focus on the top cuvées from this estate, the portfolio is packed with incredible values at just about every price point. These reviews focus on the 2015 and 2016 vintages, with all the 2015s tasted out of bottle and the majority of the 2016s still resting in barrel. The 2015 vintage is a monumental one for this estate and matches (and in a few cases, eclipses) what was accomplished in 2009 and 2010. These are ripe, concentrated, structured wines that are going to demand cellar time. In contrast, the 2016s are more elegant and silky, with terrific purity of fruit. They don’t have the sheer grandeur of fruit found in the 2015s, yet are seriously concentrated and have no shortage of tannins and structure.

The powerhouse 2015 Saint Joseph les Granilites sacrifices none of its intricate crushed stone elements to the warmth of the vintage, it just adds layers of creamy, ripe blackberries over the top. This full-bodied, rich and concentrated wine should provide close to two decades of drinking pleasure.