Critics Average score from professional wine critics and publications.
95
/100
Reviews
103
professional
Vintages
1
1996
Other
94/100
Syrah
NV
Community Reviews
2525
Reviews
94.4
Avg Score
98
Highest
Taster #4998
· Dec 8, 2025
95/100
30 Years of Wine-Pages and 25 Years of the Wine Pages Forum (Hawksmoor, Edinburgh) : Slightly stinky on nose with an engaging gaminess. Gorgeous precise palate. Really fresh (for its age) and charming. Utterly beguiling Black fruit piqued with cherry and strawberry. Remarkable.
1996 vintage
Taster #5841
· Dec 8, 2025
90/100
30 Years of Wine Pages and 25 years of the Wine Pages Forum - A Celebration Dinner (Hawksmoor, Edinburgh) : Quite ferrous nose, wild gamey and blue fruited. Some marzipan and joss stick ash. Palate is tight on entry but some plum fruit develops through the mid palate and onto the finish.
1996 vintage
Taster #9875
· Nov 27, 2025
93/100
Plum, berries, gamey with really high acidity. 93
1996 vintage
Taster #6464
· Aug 30, 2025
Alaska 2025
1996 vintage
Taster #4198
· Jul 25, 2025
95/100
Served over tasting menu side by side with Selosse Sous le mont D17. Initially library and leather nose with sweet finish. Tannins and acidity in good balance. Evolved with blueberry notes and some minty freshness at times. Outstanding and adapting to multiple dishes.
1996 vintage
Taster #4456
· Jul 18, 2025
95/100
Red with garnet rim, nose on red fruit, spices, bramble, leather. Very Burgundian. On the palate, tannins are tamed, high acidity, red fruited. With savoury notes, balance without power. Long finish
1996 vintage
Taster #9281
· Jul 16, 2025
97/100
(Very) Good Bottles (Noize) : This was wildly complex and intoxicating. A gamey, powdery, truffley nose, with sweet decay and then, with even more air (this had been decanted for a couple of hours), notes of bacon fat and something sweet and childlike, which reminded me of Funny Feet ice lollies. Delicate and nicely proportioned on the palate, which had refreshing forest fruit through the midpalate and finished in a dirty, smoky and sexy register. Fantastic with our food, and …
1996 vintage
Taster #5841
· Jul 16, 2025
95/100
A small supper with out of this world wines (Noizé, London) : Wow. What a wine. Blood, iron some Morello cherry sorbet and some iris petal. Air sees some rosehip tea and a couple of ppm of liquorice emerge. After 30 minutes some hints of candied bacon. Palate has smokey cherry on entry, layers of peppered plum on the mid palate and just a hint of desiccated blood orange on the finish. Super match for the venison wellington.
1996 vintage
Taster #1913
· Jan 1, 2025
94/100
Fully mature and feral. Undergrowth, tree bark, leather, dried blackberries, bright structure, hugely dimensional. Incredibly tertiary, but not yet drying out. This is lean and totally representative of where great Syrah goes with decades of age. Burgundian in style, and a great match with lamb.
1996 vintage
Taster #9483
· Jun 24, 2024
95/100
Thanks to O's friend, S, who surprised us not just with a Rayas 1995, but this Chave Hermitage in magnum, from the 1996 vintage. Wow! Our new friend, S, had opened this 24 hours prior, and had the first half of the magnum last night. Even after 24 hours of bottle breathing, this was still well structured with some powerful and firm tannins, yet provided such a mellow mouth-feel. Superb balance, with great depth even though this is from a …
1996 vintage
Taster #1299
· Nov 15, 2023
N Rhone Feast (Noizé) : Deep purple colour - young seeming for its age. Something a bit rum about this - discussion of VA at the table. Suspect this was not a great bottle.
1996 vintage
Taster #3123
· Oct 26, 2023
93/100
My last bottle and no regrets in that sense. It's very fine afte an hour with ai, a tough almost lean vintage showing, but soon comes coffee, chocolate and tobacco. Tell tale iron notes as well, amazing depth here. No hurry, but certainky no sin to drink it either. #Bagnols-en-Fôret
1996 vintage
Taster #8152
· Oct 8, 2023
93/100
4 hour decant. Very firm on first sip after decanting. Classic Chave nose . Palate intense but balanced. Quite a firm year . Plenty of time but very very good now
1996 vintage
Taster #8370
· Oct 1, 2023
Allemand v Chave Los Angeles edition : Wildly different wine from the 1992 that was served by it. Really burly meaty and thick. Lots of olive and smoke on the nose and the palate had a coarse tannin and more tobacco driven notes with dark burly fruit. One to sit on for a bit longer
1996 vintage
Taster #9228
· Sep 30, 2023
93/100
The nose is surprisingly moderate, showing a bit less of the classic Chave truffle and smoke, palate is somewhat resolved, opens a little easy, then turns more savory, adding complexity as it airs. Quite beautiful.
1996 vintage
Taster #3365
· Sep 29, 2023
96/100
Allemand vs Chave (Kitchen Istanbul) : Gorgeous nose with brine, smoked meat, pepper, violets, olives, and forest notes. Nice acidity with bright fruit, more cherries, pepper, and spices on the palate. Long finish. Fantastic wine with lovely complexity that has aged beautifully. The palate in particular is spectacular.
1996 vintage
Taster #5610
· Sep 29, 2023
97/100
Chave vs. Allemand (Kitchen Istanbul, SF) : Tertiary nose with incredible intensity, mulch, olive brine, savory, violets, smoke; palate is medium bodied, savory, lovely intensity; long finish. This is spectacular, still improving. 97
1996 vintage
Taster #2513
· Aug 5, 2023
95/100
1996 Rhone and Burgundy (Bronte) : classic flavours, pure essence of red berries, barely noticeable oak, refined soft spice, and a structure that is silky long and refined. absolutely delicious.
1996 vintage
Taster #3329
· Jul 30, 2023
96/100
from magnum. pristine fill and cork. abundant bouquet. more interesting than I can measure. deliberate acid structure meets the bistecca fiorentina more than halfway. such pretty wilted floral music, born on a broth of elegant mushroom and sweet stone. choral black roots and berries. a transparent respite from insidious expectations of sticky fruit.
1996 vintage
Taster #2026
· Jan 23, 2023
Very good, although not quite as special as other bottles of 96’ Chave I’ve drank. May not have been stored perfectly. Still delicious though.
1996 vintage
Taster #5498
· Jan 15, 2023
98/100
Nose is 100, as good as a chave can get. Palate 96. Colour is garnet but it's no tired at all. Amazing wine.
1996 vintage
Taster #9209
· Jan 14, 2023
92/100
Wonderful wine with sweet plum present all around a hint at old tannins too.
1996 vintage
Taster #4285
· Nov 24, 2022
93/100
Very clean bottle. More black olive than scorched earth / smoke. A distinctive Chave perfume above the robust black and red fruit. A little big and punchy but beginning to show some elegance and finesse. 93- 94, see 12/18/20 note.
1996 vintage
Taster #1110
· Jul 10, 2022
93/100
Première fois avec un vieux Hermitage de Chave. Au nez j'étais sur du Pinot, petit fruits rouge, délicat, florale un peu de poivre avec une belle matière profonde. La bouche est similaire, en fraicheur, c'est savoureux, fin, belle finale agréable. un vin dans son sweet spot moins expressif que les deux cote-rotie side by side mais plus pure et en fraicheur.
1996 vintage
Taster #1078
· Jun 23, 2022
95/100
Chave: "In the name of science" (Chicago, IL) : From magnum. I've always been suspicious of this vintage because of a dodgy bottle (whose flaw I never identified) a few years ago. Yeah, not really rational. Anyway, this bottle was very different from that. An exuberant, explosive nose with generous red fruit and still some juiciness on the palate too. There's a little leather on the nose, giving this a slight animale note. Lighter in texture, in a more acid-driven …
1996 vintage