Winemaker Notes
The perfect companion for beef, a shoulder of young lamb in its early years, and of game or strongest meat, after several years in a good cellar.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Drinking at point, the 2009 Cornas Vieilles Vignes offers a powerful yet lively, complex style in its red, blue, and black fruits as well as notes of menthol, pepper, spice, and iron-like nuances. With full-bodied richness, it's a big, rich, textured Cornas with still-present tannins, a layered mouthfeel, and a great finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Notes of spring flowers, pen ink, graphite, blackberries and cassis soar from the glass of the inky black-hued 2009 Cornas Vieilles Vignes. This magnificent wine offers thrilling levels of concentration, massive extract and an off-the-charts finish. A killer Cornas, it can be drunk between 2020-2035.
Rating: 94+ -
Wine Spectator
This is loaded with vivacious character, as a lively briar note punctuates the grippy charcoal, sweet tapenade, blackberry coulis and macerated plum fruit flavors. The long, iron-driven finish lets the fruit play out. Best from 2014 through 2024.
Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
Distinguished as a fine Syrah producing zone since the 18th century, Cornas, like Cote Rotie, is made up of vineyards covering steep and hard-to-work, granite terraces. As a result the region’s wines fell out of favor during the mid 20th century when the global market was more focused on bulk wines and vineyards that yielded high quantities. It wasn’t until the 1980s when a group of energetic young winemakers reestablished the integrity of these precipitous terraces and also began making an ultra-modern style of Syrah. The new style didn’t need a decade before it was drinkable and could reach the consumer faster than the region’s traditional wines. Given the new quality coming out of the zone, its popularity once again soared and today a good Cornas can easily challenge many of those from Hermitage. Characteristics of Syrah from Cornas include teeth-staining flavors of blackberry jam, plum, pepper, violets, smoked game, charcoal, chalk dust and smoke.