Alain Voge Cornas Vieilles Fontaines 2003

Deeply colored with a purple hue, they smell of freshly crushed blackberries with a sauvage (or wild), gamey element. The flavors are dense and layered, with fresh black, briary fruit, and a velvety, jammy intensity. Fully integrated, ripe tannins.

Almost all of the vines at Domaine Voge are 50+ years old, meaning that virtually all of Voge's production is labelled Vieilles Vignes. Steeply sloping like Côte Rôtie and facing south and east, the terroir of Cornas is dense granitic schist rather than mica-based as in Côte Rôtie, giving the wines a more subtle elegance in the mouth and a bit more high-toned purple fruit in flavor.

"Produced from 100 plus-year Syrah vines planted on pure granite, the 2003 Cornas Vieilles Fontaines is a candidate for Cornas of the vintage. While extremely backward and more austere than the Vieilles Vignes cuvee, it possesses remarkable freshness and vigor as well as a dense ruby/purple color, and an extraordinary nose of acacia flowers, melted licorice, plums, blackberries, and truffles. The wine is deep, full-bodied, relatively high in tannin, and exceptionally lively and well-defined. Give it 3-5 years of bottle age, and consume it over the following 15 or more years. It is a potential legend in the making."
-Wine Advocate