Delas Frères
The northern Rhône's great comeback — a sleepy old Tain-l'Hermitage house, founded 1835 and now owned by Champagne Louis Roederer, that remade itself into a granite-Syrah force from Hermitage to Cornas. Which bottle to open, where to taste it, and why it's the smart-money name on the hill.
Delas is the comeback story. For most of the twentieth century it was the quiet one — the third house at the foot of the hill of Hermitage, overshadowed by bigger neighbours, making sound wine and rarely more. Then, in the late 1990s, it stopped coasting. Today it draws precise, granite-driven Syrah from the great northern Rhône crus — Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, Cornas, Saint-Joseph — and it has become one of the valley's most dependable names, and one of its shrewdest ways into wines that usually ask a great deal more. This is the house that decided to matter.
It has been in Tain-l'Hermitage since 1835, family-founded, and it belongs now to Champagne Louis Roederer — the Reims family behind Cristal. Hold onto that, because Roederer's patient money is half the plot.
The turnaround
Here's how a sleepy old merchant remade itself. Roederer had already owned Delas for years, but nothing much stirred until a change at the top around 1996–97: Fabrice Rosset arrived as managing director and, crucially, Jacques Grange came in as winemaker. Grange is the name to know. He reset the whole ambition of the place — sourcing tightened, yields dropped, and the single blended house style fractured into serious single-vineyard bottlings.
The wines went from correct to compelling in the space of a few vintages — one of the northern Rhône's fastest reputations to rebuild.
It worked fast. Within a handful of harvests Delas was being talked about alongside the crus it had spent decades merely standing next to, its top Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie drawing attention the house hadn't enjoyed in living memory. Roederer paid for the vineyards, the fruit and, eventually, the building to make them in — the same long-game instinct that runs its Champagne.
The wines, ranked
If you learn one, learn Hermitage Les Bessards. It's the summit: single-vineyard Syrah off the band of dark granite at the western end of the hill, dense and structured and built to run for decades. It's the wine the modern house stakes its name on. Beside it sits Domaine des Tourettes, the other benchmark Hermitage, and a Marsanne-Roussanne white that ages far longer than anyone expects a white to.
North in Côte-Rôtie, La Landonne is the flagship — perfumed, silkier old-vine Syrah off the schist terraces above the river. Down in Cornas, Chante-Perdrix is the savage one, all dark granite. And Sainte-Épine is the sharpest argument I know for Saint-Joseph, a cru too many drinkers skip. For a white to start a fight over, the Condrieu Clos Boucher — heady, apricot-scented Viognier — is the bottle to pour for anyone who thinks the grape can't be serious.
The through-line across all of them: clarity and lift over sheer weight. These taste of a named slope, not a recipe. It's Rhône Valley wine at its most site-driven, and pound for pound often a better buy than its louder neighbours.
The setting
Stand at the foot of the hill and you can read the whole appellation like a map — the dark granite of Les Bessards at one end, the lighter soils climbing toward the chapel at the top. Tain-l'Hermitage is a working river town under that great terraced slope, which has grown some of France's longest-lived Syrah since long before anyone drew an appellation line around it. Delas kept its cellars for years across the water at Saint-Jean-de-Muzols, near Tournon on the Ardèche bank. The centre of gravity shifted when the house opened a modern, gravity-fed winery in Tain in the mid-2010s — which is where you'll taste today.
Visiting
Delas welcomes visitors, which is not a given among the Rhône's serious names — reason enough to make it a stop. The Tain winery has a tasting room and shop where you can taste across the range, plus guided cellar visits and seated tastings by appointment. Walk in for a pour; book ahead for anything deeper — a proper cellar walk, the single-vineyard wines, a vertical — and book earlier in summer, when Tain fills with cyclists and river traffic. Confirm formats on the house's own site before you travel.
What to buy
One bottle, one choice: a good vintage of Hermitage Les Bessards, the house at full stretch, and give it a decade. Want the same granite character sooner and easier? Go Cornas Chante-Perdrix or the Saint-Joseph Sainte-Épine — dark, peppery northern Rhône Syrah without the Hermitage wait. And the Condrieu Clos Boucher is the white to settle the Viognier question. None of the reds is in a hurry. Neither, in the end, was the house that learned to make them this well.
Common questions
Northern Rhône Syrah with granite in its bones — above all the single-vineyard Hermitage Les Bessards, with Côte-Rôtie, Cornas and Saint-Joseph close behind. But the real headline is the comeback. A long-underperforming old house that, from the late 1990s on, turned itself into one of the region's most reliable — and best-value — names.
Champagne Louis Roederer — the family house in Reims behind Cristal, which took control in the late twentieth century. That patient Champagne money paid for the modern winery and the quality push that woke the estate up. Confirm the current ownership and dates on the house's own site.
Yes, and you should — an open door isn't a given among the Rhône's serious names. There's a tasting room and shop at the Tain-l'Hermitage winery where you can taste across the range, plus guided cellar visits and seated tastings by appointment. Walk in for a pour; book ahead for anything deeper, and earlier in the busy summer months.
Delas sits with Jaboulet and Chapoutier as one of the historic houses at the foot of the Hermitage hill — but it's the smallest, and for decades it was the quietest of the three. Then the late-1990s revival — new winemaking, tighter sourcing, single-vineyard bottlings — reset it from a coasting old label into the name to watch.
Glossary
- Négociant
- A merchant house that buys grapes, must or wine from growers and raises and bottles it under its own name — as distinct from a domaine that only bottles its own fruit. Delas both farms its own vineyards and buys, so it works as a négociant-grower.
- Les Bessards
- The band of dark granite at the western end of the hill of Hermitage, prized for the deepest, longest-lived Syrah on the slope. Delas owns vines here and bottles them as its flagship Hermitage.
- Northern Rhône crus
- The named appellations of the steep upper Rhône — Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Saint-Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage, Hermitage, Cornas and Saint-Péray — almost all built on granite and, for the reds, on Syrah alone.