While I've had multiple looks at previous vintages, this is my first review of the 2018 Hermitage Ligne de Crete Les Grandes Vignes. Inky in hue, it boasts powerful, brooding aromas that include hints of hardwood charcoal, dark berries, licorice, crushed stone and pencil shavings. Full-bodied and almost painfully intense, it's a huge, mouthfilling wine that seems capable of aging up to three decades. Rich, supple and creamy in texture, yet possessing remarkable length and retronasal nuance, it has to rank up there with some of the Hermitage hill's classics from other, more renowned producers. It certainly deserves a seat at that table and may be a candidate for a perfect score in the future.

This inky, ripe Syrah is sourced from a single plot near the sun-drenched pinnacle of the Hermitage. Pumped with ripeness and searing black spice, the roasted, mouthstaining plum and blueberry flavors are rimmed by fiery tannins. Tasted at the end of 2021, its density and frame still feel impenetrable. This complex wine should only increase its smoky, charred-earth intensity from 2024 and improve well through 2050.

Inky violet. Powerful black and blue fruit preserve, violet, olive and exotic spice aromas, along with smoky mineral and black pepper flourishes. Juicy and deeply concentrated, offering bitter cherry, blackcurrant, floral pastille and fruitcake flavors that become livelier with aeration. Shows sharp definition and spicy thrust on an impressively long, chewy finish that's framed by steadily building tannins.