Cuvée Cathelin, the Hermitage that only exists some years.

For generations the Chave family sold one Hermitage, a single blend drawn from their holdings across the hill. In 1990 that changed. A second wine appeared, in a tiny quantity, under a label carrying a painting rather than the usual script, and named after the man who painted it: Bernard Cathelin, a friend of the family. It was not announced as a new tier or a marketing idea. It simply existed that year, and the trade had to work out what it was.

Ermitage Cuvée Cathelin is made only in vintages the house judges exceptional, drawn mainly from Les Bessards, the steep granite slope on the western side of the hill, and aged entirely in new oak. Around two hundred cases are made in a year it exists at all. This cellar holds three: the 1990, the 2003 and the 2009, one bottle each.

Chave had sold Hermitage under one name since the family first bottled it, generations before 1990. The house did not frame Cathelin as a new flagship or a replacement for anything. It behaved, from the first vintage, as an exception rather than a line extension: a wine that exists in some years and does not exist at all in most of them, with no fixed place in a price list because there is no guarantee it will be made again next year.

A wine that is declared, not simply made

Cuvée Cathelin does not follow a schedule. After the 1990 it appeared again in 1991 and then not for several years, before returning for a run of vintages the house considered strong enough: 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2009 and 2010 among them. In a year it is not made, the fruit that would have gone into it simply stays in the regular Hermitage blend. There is no second label sold as a consolation.

That logic is not unique to the Rhône. Barolo Monfortino is declared on the same principle a continent away, by a different family, for the same reason: some vintages earn a second, smaller wine, and most do not. The gaps in a Cathelin sequence are not missing bottles. They are the vintages Chave decided were not good enough for it.

Chave does not publish a running list of which years carry the Cathelin name, which is part of why assembling even a partial run of it takes decades rather than a purchase order. The vintages that are documented, among them the three in this cellar, have gone on to receive some of the highest scores a Rhône wine has ever been given, which is unusual for a wine with no fixed identity from one release to the next.

What actually separates it from the regular Hermitage

The two wines come from the same hill and often the same cellar at the same time, which makes the differences easy to miss on paper and obvious in the glass.

• The fruit. The classic Hermitage blend draws on all of Chave's parcels across the hill's lieux-dits. Cathelin is weighted far more heavily toward Les Bessards, the most structured and slowest-ripening of them, which is also the backbone of the house's regular wine in most years.
• The oak. The standard Hermitage ages in a mix of older barrels. Cathelin ages entirely in new oak, a choice that only works on fruit concentrated enough to carry it without being dominated by it.
• The decision. The regular Hermitage is made every year, in a volume that varies with the harvest. Cathelin is made or not made, as a single yes-or-no judgment on the vintage as a whole.

Neither wine is simply a better or worse version of the other. Cathelin is what the hill gives when the house decides a year deserves a second, narrower statement.

Three vintages, one bottle each

1990. The debut, and the vintage that announced the wine existed at all. Riper and more immediately open than the vintages that followed it, with higher alcohol and more flesh on release.

2003. The European heatwave vintage, small berries and heat-stressed concentration rather than classic ripeness. A wine built by the weather of a single, extreme summer more than by house style.

2009. A warm, even growing season with no disease pressure, and a wine that was approachable earlier than most Cathelins. Ripe and round rather than austere.

Three vintages, three different reasons the house judged the year worth a second wine. None of them is a substitute for the other two.

The hill's other legend

Hermitage has one other bottling with a reputation on this scale: Hermitage La Chapelle, made by the neighbouring house of Paul Jaboulet Aîné. The 1978 in this cellar is one of the small number of Rhône wines ever to receive a perfect score from a major critic, and it became a legend through a single extraordinary vintage rather than through a standing second cuvée. Cathelin and La Chapelle 1978 answer different questions: one is what the hill can do in one unrepeatable year, the other is what a house decides, vintage after vintage, is worth declaring at all.

What a bottle like this means to buy

Each of the three Cathelins here is a single bottle, not a case, and that changes how it should be priced and compared. The logic is set out in the note on single-bottle lots: there is no trade bid under a wine like this, no second quote to get, and the condition of the specific bottle matters as much as the vintage on the label. Before anything else, that means the fill level, checked and stated rather than assumed.

What we do

Each Cathelin in this cellar is described with its fill level and its condition before any question of price, the same as every other bottle here. A 1990 offered as a single bottle is described as exactly that, not upgraded because the name is rare.

We do not publish prices. For any of the three vintages, write to us, and the reply states condition and provenance alongside the quote.