80 km south of Lyon grows one of the world’s most famous wines — Hermitage. So coveted that the name was once stolen and used for extraordinary reds on two other continents: in the USA and Australia. The steep granite slopes above the village of Tain l’Hermitage are magical. At 125 hectares they are barely the size of a single Premier Cru in Bordeaux. Hermitage wine, incidentally, was occasionally used until the mid-19th century to bolster the latter.

The heat-retaining granite, together with the southern exposure, helps the (two-thirds red, one-third white) grapes ripen to the most beautiful and complete maturity. Hermitage wines can easily mature for two to three decades and are often mistakable for great Bordeaux. Coveted, and intimately bound up with the myth of “Hermitage”, are the wines of the Domaine Jean-Louis Chave. And rightly so. They count among the most beautiful and longest-lived wines of this region.

Probably no other vineyard in France is more precisely mapped and studied — the individual parcels on Hermitage are called “climats”. Among the best known of the total of 13 are surely Le Méal, Les Greffieux, Les Bessards and La Chapelle (the name refers to a chapel right at the top, owned by Paul Jaboulet Aîné). The wine area has held AOC status since 1937, and three communes have the right to use the AOC Hermitage label. That the name derives from a hermit is probably common knowledge: according to legend, the knight Henri Gaspard de Sterimberg stopped here in 1124 on his way back from a crusade — and stayed for 30 years as a hermit.