Winemaker Notes
A season in the norms of our soils, with favorable weather but rainy in spring, forcing us to a great vigilance on the cryptogamic pressure. A beautiful summer and a beautiful late season followed, allowing the optimal maturity of a fairly abundant harvest. While balanced, the wines are full of elegance, while expressing the typicity of both Cornas and Saint-Péray.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2015 Cornas Vieilles Vignes is stunning stuff! Sporting a still youthful ruby hue as well as awesome Cornas notes of darker cherry and blue fruits interwoven with iron, black olive, peppery herbs, and violets, it's full-bodied and has a powerful, focused mouthfeel, ripe yet still building and present tannins, and a gorgeous finish. It's just now at the early stages of its prime drinking window and has another two decades of longevity.
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Wine Spectator
Dark yet inviting, with a well of boysenberry and blackberry compote flavors luring you in, while charcoal, bay leaf and cast iron notes add contrast and range to hold your attention. The grippy finish shows cut and energy, with a lingering savory and rosemary edge. Best from 2021 through 2037.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Notes of tobacco, dry plums, spices, camphor and dark berries preface the 2015 Cornas Vieilles Vignes, a medium- to full-bodied, dense and deep Cornas with delicate, controlled power and a long, sweet and spicy finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Layers of charred meat, granite and anise lend complexity to blackberry and cherry on the nose of this wine. Despite the ample fruit it maintains an earthen, mineral undertone and long finish with ripe, persistent tannins. This riveting wine should open and meld over the next decade and hold further. Citadel Trading.
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.