Winemaker Notes
Try pairing with venison steak, sauteed mushrooms, and roast squab with thyme.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Young readers, or those with good longevity genes, should check out the enormous, backward, foreboding, black/purple-colored 2009 Cornas Domaine de St.-Pierre. A classic Cornas, it offers up scents of beef blood, charcuterie, blackberries, new saddle leather, pepper and smoked game, mouthsearing levels of tannin and huge extract. It reminds me of some of the old Noel Verset Cornas made in the 1970s and early 1980s. Don’t dare think about drinking it until it has reached age ten. It should age effortlessly for 25-30 years or more.
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Wine Enthusiast
Sure, it starts out a bit toasty and cedary, but that wood will surely integrate with the potent plummy, meaty fruit given a few years’ time. It’s full bodied and a bit coarsely textured for the moment, but finishes long and will clearly benefit from cellaring.
Cellar Selection
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.