Cornas: Big and Beautiful
Last week I decided to commit what I thought would be hollow vinous infanticide and crack open a bottle of 2009 Cornas from an up-and-coming producer, Domaine du Coulet. The bottle hadn’t been in our wine shop for more than two hours before I took the leap and pulled the cork. As the cork was finally released from its station in the neck of the bottle I thought to myself “this thing is going to be burly and undrinkable. What have I done?”
After all, this was a bottle of Cornas! Though the 2009 vintage in the northern Rhône was a warm one, allowing winemakers the option of crafting opulent styles wines, the Syrah-based wines of the Cornas appellation always demand bottle age and are rarely described as opulent. What kind of fool would crack a bottle of the latest vintage of Cornas, the burly appellation of the northern Rhône? My kind of fool, as it turned out.
Once the wine was poured into the glass and spun around for a minute numerous layers of aromas and flavors began to emerge. Everything from violets to leather, dark plum to cedar, black licorice to burnt tobacco, and iron to charcoal flooded the senses as this painfully young and promising wine coated the palate and lingered forever on the finish. My co-worker Justin exclaimed that it was the best Syrah he’d ever had, and I could understand his enthusiasm…the stuff was truly awesome, in the real sense of the word.
Though the 2009 vintage was a warm one in the northern Rhône, and in Cornas in particular, this wine boasted a spine of acidity that lent freshness and balance to an impossibly large frame. Further, and most importantly for me, the wine wasn’t marred by the exaggerated use of new oak that chokes the beauty out of so many young wines throughout the world. This syrah was densely packed and exuberant, but it was all there in balance. As I sipped and chewed on this beauty of a wine it took me back to my 2003 tour through French wine country; the wine had me thinking about my day spent in Cornas and about what makes the appellation special.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati