2012 Delas Frères Hermitage Les Bessards

Community Tasting Notes (11) Avg Score: 91.7 points

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  1/21/2024 - GuanYu Likes this wine: 93 Points

  20 months since last bottle. Uncorked but did not decant for 3 hours. It had softened and developed marginally since 20 months ago. Ruby red with pinkish-orange rim. Flagrant black fruits, blackcurrant, raisin, violets and Imperial Leather on the nose. Unripe black fruits, cassis, tobacco, mild game, mild leather, black pepper, dried Provencal herbs, cedar and stones on the palate. Medium-full bodied, medium-high acidity, medium tannin, medium-high structure and medium alcohol. Long gluey finish. Complex, layered and exciting. Wine was in teenage phase and plenty of energy.
  
  This bottle would need another 2-3 years before entering good drinking window since there was not much tertiary flavors. An infanticide if drinking it too early.

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  12/10/2022 - Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 93 Points

  As Bruce Springsteen wrote in the song 'Tunnel of Love':
  
  It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough
  Winemaker meets a great vineyard and they fall in love
  But this vintage is haunted by unseasonal rain and the ride gets rough
  You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above
  If you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love
  
  As we know, 2012 was a bit of a Gremlin ridden year in the Northern Rhone and for all the glory of the vineyard, the maker and the history of this cuvee, it still has to live with the vicissitudes of the year. It does come damned close to rising above the vintage but, in the end, we have to live with what we can't rise above. It isn't so hard, because this is a very enjoyable wine - lots of black pepper, some clove and licorice, a little roast meat and some slightly dilute dark plum and blackberry. Fresh acid and tannins are present but easy going. This improves enormously with time open, so I suggest decant and give it a few hours at least.
  
  How close this comes to being a fantastic wine. It is a fantastic wine for the year. However, it is not cheap and whilst it may serve a place in providing drinking whilst better years come around, there are better years and better options on a value for money scale. Having said that I find myself feeling that for all that the house is haunted and the ride has been a little rough, I will stick with it, partly because that is how I roll and partly because the wine is (just) worth it.
  
  A friend dropped around a 2008 Clonakilla O'Riada Shiraz and there's arguably only a cigarette paper separating this and the O'Riada (and if you can spot the differences clearly, please also let me know the brand of the cigarette paper, for fine it is). Ultimately, I think the difference remains a certain combination of depth with grace of movement that is slightly ahead of the O'Riada, but make no mistake, the O'Riada is no Sonny Liston type Oz Shiraz.
  
  Congratulations to Delas, they have done much better in this difficult year than Rostaing. We Rostywallah's must bide out time, lament in private and wait for the glorious 2015's to come on stream, for theirs shall be the glory and the light!

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  5/14/2022 - GuanYu Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Seductive Hermitage. Pronounced notes of rum raisins among layers of other black fruits and leather.

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  1/20/2022 - Dough Boy Likes this wine: 94 Points

  A classic Syrah showing balance, restraint and finness. Heading toward a Pinot in body and weight bright with red berry fruit and spice.

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  11/19/2019 - Vineyard Boy Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Had at hotel in Athens, greece. Delas La Landonne 2012 was much better and smoother

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