In the last century, I obtained three cases of this wine — one case of the 1985 and two cases of the 1989 — intending to enjoy them for special occasions over the years: holidays mainly, but special birthdays too. Over time I got to know this wine well; it became something like a member of the family. I tried both vintages as the years passed, but found the 1985 was developing faster than the 1989 — which was fortunate, since I only had one case of the 1985. That vintage is long gone, but the 1989s carried me forward to this point. Three bottles remain.
The '89 Hermitage stood back. It was older. It had had its day. But it wasn't dead — it just called for a different approach. And this is where I had one of those "aha" moments one gets occasionally, or rarely, in wine. This wine talked to me, as it has over the years, and told me this really wasn't the right time for it to be opened. Nonetheless, here we were. So this is what we got.
I'm sitting in a large boat, and we've just gone through a day on the water. About two-thirds through, we hit rough seas — challenging waves, but nothing the boat couldn't handle. It worked its way through the choppy water; in fact, it was a brilliant ride. The wind, the sun, the atomized water in the face, the gulls above, the porpoises, the orca and her two calves frolicking alongside.
And then a calm sea. Serenity. Silence. Dead silence.
That was what the wine was like that night. Just like that.
But that isn't the reason I'm writing this. There's another part of the story.
We like to open wines and get the story right off: What does it smell like? How's the color? How does it taste? Is it pleasant to drink now, or should we wait a few years (too late!)?
Wine writers and critics do this all the time, often posting a numerical score at the end to signal a wine's worthiness to be bought, collected, consumed.
What I've found with the 1989 La Chapelle, over the years, as we've both grown older together, is that the wine has become less a thing to analyze and evaluate and more a companion in time. Like a family member, it's had its ups and downs — crumbled corks, plenty of sediment.
I know the saying "there are no great vintages, only great bottles" gets repeated often, and I understand why people find truth in it. But when you spend over thirty years with a wine, tasting it when it — and you — are young, and then open it during memorable moments, it becomes something else. It isn't a perfect "100." That would be ludicrous, and to me, disrespectful. It has had a life, and those bottles, in my care, have shown what kind of life that's been.
When I got the wine, it was fresh, firm, healthy, from a good if not great vintage. That's why I collected it. I had read, pre-internet, that Hermitage had the possibility of a long life — fifty years or more — from historical accounts. I thought, well, I'll be around then, even though it's a long time. Why not stock up and see where this wine goes? Thirty-seven years later (which went by in a flash, by the way), here we are, in the last stages of a wine collected to be opened and enjoyed over time.
Evaluated? Of course — we took the quality into account. But there was an overriding aspect to one's relationship with this wine that was more personal, more intimate. We were both living things moving through time together, and in the act of drinking it, becoming one with each other in some way. It affected me, it influenced me, it pleased me, surely — but it also nourished me.
And lest this seem like it was only about me: those around me partook in the wine too. Some of those people are no longer with us — my wife Liz, my mother, my aunts, friends who have passed on or moved away. It was a wonderful experience to have opened and shared this wine, for exactly what it was made for. And to me, if one is to love wine, that's the reason: this is what that love looks like. The wine wasn't always perfect. But the journey with it has been exactly that.
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| Dino Illuminati and Emidio Pepe |
P.S. — There's a coda to this story I couldn't have planned. As of this year, the winemaking at Paul Jaboulet Aîné's Domaine de la Chapelle — the very wine this essay is about — has passed from Caroline Frey to Chiara Pepe, an Italian, from Abruzzo's Emidio Pepe estate. Abruzzo isn't just a region to me; it's an area, and a particular one — Emidio Pepe, which I have long followed and loved, sits a short drive from Dino Illuminati's winery in Controguerra, another winery I've worked with and also loved for years, in a corner of Italy I know well. That an Italian hand, from a family and a place I hold close, is now shaping the future of a wine that's been part of my life for thirty-seven years — I couldn't have made that up if I tried. Some things just line up.
