Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Features a dense core of steeped dark plum, black currant and blackberry fruit, melding with singed bay leaf and tobacco leaf, dark olive and baker's chocolate notes. This has serious heft and muscle overall, but the elements pull together on the finish thanks a mouthwatering chalky spine. A very impressive effort. Best from 2017 through 2027.
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James Suckling
This has a stony, dark and brooding richness on the nose with ripe dark plums, blackberries, gently tar and some coal smoke, too. The palate has an open-knit and fleshy richness, mixed up with red- and black-plum flavors. It shows loads of graphite and great depth and balance. Drink now through to 2020+. A blend of plots from the lower and upper hillsides and partly matured in barrel.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Cornas Chante Perdrix offers beautiful spice, white pepper, and cedar characteristics to go with more background gaminess and sweet raspberry fruit. Medium-bodied, pretty and nicely balanced, it has a charming, upfront and approachable feel on the palate and seems ideal for drinking over the coming 5-7 years.
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.