100% Syrah

Food pairings: Venison and other large game, red meats such as beef with a grape jus or lamb baked in a crust, flambéed quail, and mature or bloomy-rind cheeses.

Scores:

• 98 points, Jeb Dunnuck
• 97 points, Wine Spectator
• 96 points, Decanter
• 96 points, James Suckling
• 96 points, Vinous
• 96 points, Wine Advocate

Winemaking: Ex-Voto is made only in exceptional vintages, when the wine is clearly superior to Guigal's appellation Hermitage. The grapes ferment in temperature-controlled stainless-steel tanks with regular pump-overs and a long maceration of about four weeks. The wine then spends more than three years in new oak barrels, crafted in the family's own cooperage at Château d'Ampuis, before bottling. The sunny 2019 vintage produced a dense, powerful Ex-Voto with a rare intensity of flavor and color; it deserves at least a decade in the cellar and will evolve for decades beyond.

Vineyards and terroir: Ex-Voto is one of Guigal's "Treasures" and the fulfillment of Marcel Guigal's long-held dream of owning vines on the hill of Hermitage. It comes from very old vines in four of the hill's most famous parcels, each on a different soil: Les Bessards, on granite; Les Greffieux, on glacial gravels; Les Murets, on fluvio-glacial alluvium and pebbles; and L'Hermite, on the loess plateau at the top of the hill, with its clay, sand and silt. The vines grow on steep slopes facing the Rhône above Tain-l'Hermitage. The appellation takes its name from the knight Gaspard de Stérimberg, who in 1224 retired from the world to live as a hermit on the summit of this granite hill and tend its vines, and its wines were later the favorites of the Russian court.

Family and history: Étienne Guigal founded Maison Guigal in 1946 in Ampuis, at the heart of Côte-Rôtie, after arriving there at 14 in 1924; he made wine for 67 vintages. His son Marcel, with his wife Bernadette, built it into the Rhône Valley's most celebrated house, and in 1995 the family bought the historic Château d'Ampuis on the banks of the Rhône. Around the turn of the millennium the purchase of the Jean-Louis Grippat and de Vallouit estates finally brought them four exceptional parcels on the hill of Hermitage, and the first Ex-Voto, red and white, followed with the 2001 vintage. Today Marcel and his son Philippe, the winemaker, run the house together with their wives, Bernadette and Eve.

In the pictures: The terraced hill of Hermitage rising above Tain-l'Hermitage, seen from across the Rhône (photo: Guerinf, 2023, CC BY-SA 4.0). Marcel and Philippe Guigal among the barrels in their cellars in Ampuis (photo: © E. Guigal, press kit).