2021 Giulliaume Gilles Cornas

Guillaume’s flagship Cornas comprises three separate parcels, all within the renowned vineyard of Chaillot, planted between the early-1950s and the mid-1970s: lower-lying Combe de Chaillot (vinified and bottled separately until the 2015 vintage), with its sandier soils, offers more straightforward fruit; steep Les Terrasses, high up on the slope and poor of topsoil, contributes a granitic mineral sizzle and an intense spiciness; and the also-terraced Grandes Mures, with its ideal sun-soaking southward exposition, provides sumptuously dark-fruited contrabass notes and enhances the final blend’s overall volume and structure. Guillaume vinifies and ages each parcel separately, combining them after an eighteen-month élévage in a mix of 400-liter and 600-liter oak casks of between five and fifteen years of age. This 2016 is complex yet accessible, with a soaring nose of dark red fruits and tingly spices, buoyed by the slightest hint of an appealing volatility that speaks to Guillaume’s devotedly traditional methodology. Its tannins are formidable yet not overwhelming, enrobed in fruit that is both vibrant and thick, and the wine is suffused with an overall sense of purity—an emblem of the supreme health of the fruit from which it was produced.