Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Cornas Les Eygats is the gem in 2016 and has a fresh, focused, backward style that carries notes of crème de cassis, spring flowers, pepper, and crushed rocks. With full-bodied richness, good acidity, and impeccable balance, it’s a brilliant wine, but it’s going to need 2-3 years of bottle age to show its full potential.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Cornas les Eygats is aging in 50% new oak and will likely be bottled in March 2018. It’s inky in hue, with enthralling notes of crushed stone and ripe plums on the nose. It’s full-bodied, rich and velvety on the palate yet also fresh, bright and lively. This won’t need much cellaring to round into form; drink from 2020.
Range: 93-95 -
James Suckling
Licorice and star anise with ripe, dark plums, blackberries and pepper. The palate has a very lively, smoothly rendered core of ripe, long, glossy tannins. Nice detail. Drink or hold.
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.