Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
It's hard to wrap your head around how a red wine can have this enormous concentration and giant structure, yet be so refined and silky. Aromas of Damson plums, black raspberries and Amarena cherries exactly fill out the mouth-filling yet incredibly precise palate. Then comes the breathtaking finish that is as graceful as a great dancer who leaps effortlessly from one side of the stage to the other. From old vines in the Reynard site. 100% whole-cluster fermentation that starts as carbonic maceration, then a handful of punchdowns. Matured in large oak foudre casks. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Cornas Reynard is one of the wines of the vintage in Cornas. Revealing a deeper, more complex bouquet than Les Chaillots, with aromas of dark wild berries, spices, violet, flowers and mulberries, it's medium to full-bodied, enrobing and elegant, layered and concentrated with a fleshy core of fruit, a tense, energetic mid-palate and more refined tannins that segue into a long, ethereal and violet-inflected finish. Pure and crystalline, this is a young classic in the making.
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.