Winemaker Notes
This charming and juicy wine offers aromas and flavors of dark fruits, scrubland, roasted meats, and spice, with a round mouthfeel accented by a touch of freshness, making it an excellent pairing for beef, duck, or veal osso bucco with vegetables.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Red plums, blackberries, potpourri, game, and violet nuances all define the 2022 Cornas Le Village, a medium-bodied, juicy, elegant, seductive Cornas that has beautiful tannins and outstanding length.
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Wine Spectator
Earthy notes of humus and cumin infuse a fragrant base of red fruit, spices, smoked potpourri and lavender. Medium-bodied, with good energy and softened, almost plush tannins. Shows firming, smoldering iron behind the scenes, which brings form and a kick of bitterness to the finish. A lighter-bodied, elegant style. Drink now through 2038. 32 cases imported.
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Vinous
The 2022 Cornas Le Village outperforms the 2021 I tasted last year, opening with intense notes of licorice, ripe black plum, cured meat and a touch of cedar. Medium- to full-bodied and refined, the 2022 is a classic, structured Cornas that’s going to need at least two more years in a cool cellar to start showing its full potential.
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.