2007 M Chapoutier Ermitage L'Ermite Blanc 750 ml

Michel Chapoutier’s Ermitage “L’Ermite” Blanc is one of the greatest, most sought-after, and rarest white wines in the world. Culled from century-old Marsanne vines at the top of Hermitage hill surrounding the famous St. Christopher chapel, this Rhône colossus has won a perfect 100-point score from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate an astounding 12 times since 1999. In 2007, the Advocate laid on 98-100 points, calling it “another candidate for perfection” and “an example of a massive white Hermitage that cannot be found anywhere else in the world,” capable of cellaring for up to 50 years. 
 
Enologist Michel Chapoutier is one of the Rhône Valley’s greatest names, a brilliant winemaker who has authored dozens of flawless 100-point reds. Parker calls him: “a beacon of inspiration and quality for the entire world.” On the steep slopes of the northern Rhône, Chapoutier’s obsessive cultivation has yielded Côte-Rôties that the rest of the world’s Syrahs are measured by. But as Parker and Rhône collectors know well, it’s on the 3.7 acres of the legendary “L’Ermite” lieux-dit in Hermitage that Chapoutier makes some of his most extravagant creations — whites that in the best vintages are “greater than the greatest Montrachet,” in the words of the famous wine critic Michel Bettane.
 
Parker and the Advocate have heaped praise on nearly every vintage of this wine, at various points calling it a “perfect wine” and claiming “white wine simply doesn’t get any better.” Sip the 2007 Ermitage out of an oversized stem, allowing the wine to slowly unfold, and you can begin to taste every detail of the place and vintage — the granite soil that gives the wine its flinty, mineral depth, the concentration of the low-yield, pre-phylloxera vines, the succulent ripeness of that growing season’s fantastic Indian summer.