Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Cornas Champelrose comes all from pure granite soils and was brought up in 25% new French oak. This deep purple-hued effort offers a plump, rounded, full-bodied style with classic Cornas notes of smoked meats, black fruits, chocolate, and earthy minerality. As with all the wines from this team, the purity of fruit, tannins, and overall balance are spot on. This beauty is already hard to resist but should evolve for 10-12 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Not as rich or as deep as the other cuvées this year, Courbis's 2018 Cornas Champelrose is still a lot of fun to drink. It's medium to full-bodied, plush and creamy and loaded with black cherries and blackberry fruit. Drink it on release and for the next 7-8 years after that. Range: 90-92
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Wine Spectator
This red bristles with savory olive and tobacco leaf notes liberally sprinkled through the mix of warmed cassis and mulled plum fruit. Sanguine and iron notes dot the precise finish. Best from 2022.
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.