Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
One of the finest Cornas wines I have tasted is Courbis’s 2009 Cornas La Sabarotte. With a style similar to Les Eygats, it exhibits notes of blueberry and blackberry liqueur intermixed with incense, creosote, charcoal, roasted meats and spring flowers. It possesses fabulous fruit as well as a skyscraper-like texture. There is no evidence of new oak because of the lavish concentration. This enormously impressive, full-bodied, massive wine will be even better in 5-10 years and should last for 25+ years.
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Wine Spectator
Takes a ripe, modern approach at first, with roasted fig, crushed plum and raspberry notes leading the way, but also lots of roasted earth and tobacco tugging from underneath to keep this honest. A piercing chalky streak emerges on the finish, providing added length and range. Very impressive. Best from 2014 through 2025.
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.