2004 Ermitage Blanc Le Meal
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Tasting notes
Showing some of the more mature notes found in the 2006, the medium-gold colored 2004 Ermitage le Meal Blanc is another incredibly concentrated, thick and unctuous effort that's overflowing with notes of browned butter, marzipan, honeyed gold fruits and smoked earth. Layered, full-bodied and with notable freshness and purity, it's drinking beautifully today but has another two-plus decades of evolution.
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Average Score
Robert Parker
Jeb Dunnuck
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Bright yellow. Intensely perfumed nose features vibrant peach and cherry pit aromas strongly accented by dried flowers, ginger and dusty minerals. Youthfully clenched at first, but opened to display an array of fresh and dried pit fruit flavors and strong mineral and spice notes. The most wound up and youthful of this set, with the depth and focus to suggest that it will richly reward patience.
Light yellow color. Dusty, stony aromas of dried pear, peach skin, marzipan, minerals and magnolia. Firm and juicy on the palate, with an intense mineral character and notes of bitter quinine, yellow apple and jasmine tea. Finishes youthful and very long, with sharply focused mineral notes dusting the palate. This is by far the least evolved of the Chapoutier single-site Hermitage blancs.
The 2004 Ermitage Le Meal blanc (266 cases) is total perfection in the bottle. Of course, this is supposedly the vineyard that so impressed Thomas Jefferson when he visited Hermitage in the late 1700s. Boasting an amazing concentrated essence of licorice, minerals, acacia flowers, and buttery honey, the wine is viscous, super-thick, rich, and mind-blowingly intense. Having just had an utterly perfect bottle of DRC 1973 Montrachet, I couldn’t help but think that this wine may well be even younger at a similar age. Robert Parker, Wine Advocate April 2007