Chateau Palmer Historical XIXth Century VdF 2014 750ml Case of 6

Gorgeous deep plum in colour, this hits you right from the first moment, plastering a smile on your face. The main takeaway is that it keeps all the power and brilliance of Palmer, but has a softness and a velvety texture that you wouldn't find in Palmer at this young age. Gentle whisps of floral aromatics, clear emphasis on blackberry and brambly hedgerow fruits, the tannins are holding everything together tightly at six years old, but there is a beautiful feeling of expansion through the palate. Palmer always has high aromatics but this goes one step further. Brilliant stuff, shame they only make 4,000 bottles a year (and not every year).

In the 19th century, it was a common practice of the time to “hermitage” the wines. Bordeaux chateaux would add to their wines a certain quantity of wine from the Rhone - notably from the region of Hermitage – whose syrah would strengthen the structure and power of the claret. A few bottles can still be found dating back to this period, whose labels note the name of the cru and the word hermitagé, all from vintages preceding the AOC regulations which finally ended this practice. Then in the 21st century, Château Palmer came up with the idea of bringing this forgotten tradition back to life. Years ago, during a visit to a renowned collector in California, Thomas Duroux, the director of the property, had the rare opportunity to taste a 19th century Bordeaux hermitagé. The emotions experienced that day, in the presence of a wine more than a century old, have been fully expressed in the renaissance of Palmer’s own hermitagé, the Historical XIXth Century Wine. A definitively historic wine, whose name honours the storied past of the great wines of Bordeaux. Yet today, the aim is no longer to simply boost a meagre claret so as to give it muscle, but rather to create a unique wine, combining wine from Palmer and a small measure of a great wine from the northern Côtes du Rhône.