Some friends cam round for dinner recently - friends who like their wines. He came round proffering a bottle of 1983 Hermitage Marquise de la Tourette from Delas. Coincidentally, I had earlier plucked a bottle of  Chave's 1983 Hermitage from the racks, and so we had a mini horizontal. We tasted the Delas wine first, prejudging the respective qualities of the two wines and thinking that the finer wine should come second. As it turned out, yes the Chave wine was probably finer, but not by very much. They were both similarly styled - it was easy to believe they came from the same appellation in the same year. The Delas wine was a touch more chunky in the mouth, and had a certain (pleasant) rusticity about it. The Chave wine developed more complexity with time in the glass. Both are excellent: wines, but I always find the Chave wine slightly disappointing given its reputation. (RJB)

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