We are back – with crap Hermitage

Tonight we are drinking to the health of Darren, Jules, but most of all, Russell, Mark and Mac whose kindness has allowed the Lomster websites to get back online. We are going through a bit of a financial black spot and they kindly provided the readies to get us back telling the world about fine wine, cutting edge technology, footed sleepers, etc. Dani has resurrected the deleted database on an Azure VM so we do not rely on a database provider or a web host – as such – we do it all, including backing up, ourselves. But huge thanks to those who paid up to see me pour scorn on some poor winemaker who’s trying his hardest, and producing shit. Chaps, one and all, you have been terribly kind to get our array of databases online again, and safe from further harm!

Further to this, I would like to direct all my hate at ClearDB who deleted the database files of all our sites with no warning even after we had contacted them to find out how much we owed them. The stinking bastards can rot in hell as far as I am concerned. Luckily we have most of our posts as Word files or Google has cached them, so we have been able to rebuild our sites with only a shit load of work. ClearDB acted grossly unprofessionally and I cannot recommend highly enough that you never use them.

Tonight’s meal is quality sausages, and what do you have with sausages? Hermitage, of course! However, you can make it fairly minor Hermitage – sausages are not fussy drinkers. Our Hermitage tonight showed that minor producers without plots all over the hill are never going to make the most supremely brilliant Hermitage, but they can still have passably acceptable characteristics.

Crap Faurie Hermitage 2011Hermitage 2011, Bernard Faurie

It is pretty dark and inky – I wonder how many points I should give it for colour? Ha ha ha! Only kidding!

As soon as I poured it a lovely aroma of grilled meat and some dark fruit blossomed from the glass. However, it does seem distinctly… well… pretty.

I can do elegant Hermitage, love it to pieces in fact, but pretty? I do not think Hermitage should be pretty. These days the quality producers of Hermitage have gone back to making it in the traditional manliest wine of France-style. Much as I loved the elegant Hermitages of the 90s I think manly is the traditional style and I heartily approve of it.

So I find myself slightly perplexed by this Faurie Hermitage. I approve of its 13% alcohol level, but the light, floral, delicate nature of the nose just seems wrong to me. I’m happy to be charmed, but the nose of this charms in a fairly simple manner.

This Faurie Hermitage is a winsome, confused first year undergraduate doing their summer job in a cake shop. Sure it has a pretty visage, and you know you will get cake in the end, but that is only when a regular worker takes care of the actual sale and sells you what you ordered rather than get confused and miss out half of what your asked for. This wine smells very winsome, but the nose does not deliver the full of blown, skilful, involving cake-delivery a quality producer would wow you with.

This Faurie Hermitage’s distinct lack of manliness is continued on the palate. Sure, it is nice but Hermitage should be more than nice – it should assault your senses, battling to give you a supremely fine wine experience. There is but a pale shadow of complexity, hedonism or class here, properties one floridly vocally demands in one’s Hermitage… What a shame, what a shame, what a shame…

This does have some nice fruit, floral in nature, it has some suggestion of tannin, but a very enfeebled example of Syrah tannins. The acidity of this Faurie Hermitage is also rather weak. It is a pale, dilute Crozes-Hermitage experience, with only an insubstantial wraith of the great hill’s qualities that were almost impossible to discern. The bastard Faurie.

The Faurie Hermitage 2011; is a nice drink, pleasantly fruity and easy to quaff, but by buggering bollocks who shells out the readies that Hermitage costs for an inoffensive, quaffable drink? Hermitage has power, density, resplendent fruit, howling complexity and fighting structure. This fails on all counts, so I class it as sub-interest and will be wary of buying from Bernard Faurie in future.

I think there is so little to this Faurie Hermitage, ageing it as long as long as one would normally expect quality Hermitage to improve for, would just turn it into insipid water. Hermitage is a far greater wine than nice or pretty – the swine who made this perversion should have his vineyards taken away and given to Domaine du Colombier; that is the address smart Hermitage buyers get their dose of manly fluid from.


I am sorry, my noble benefactors, to have toasted your kindness with such a vexatious shadow of Hermitage. I am planning a little Hermitage tasting soon, where there will be quality, and we shall toast your good health with the very finest of them all.

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