J.L. Chave 'Silène' Crozes-Hermitage Syrah 2024

J.L. Chave Sélection Crozes-Hermitage 'Silène' 2024 Syrah • Crozes-Hermitage, Northern Rhône, France

floral and peppery with real lift, tight and nervy on the palate in the way Northern Rhône Syrah should be, finishing clean and structured rather than heavy. 

Jean-Louis Chave started this label in 1995, two years after taking over his family's historic domaine, to make wine from trusted growers' fruit while he slowly replanted his family's long-abandoned Saint-Joseph hillside vines. Silène comes off granite hillside parcels in Larnage and Gervans, granite being genuinely rare for this appellation, and ages fifteen to eighteen months in large old oak casks that let the fruit speak instead of the wood. so balanced. 

pair it with: grilled lamb chops, a little char, pepper-crusted, done outside.