With the esteemed company of Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie, Cornas completes Syrah’s sacred Northern Rhône triumvirate. These legendary hillside villages are the three most important zip codes for Syrah in the world, and this wine perfectly illustrates why Cornas is so revered, and what makes its wines unique and sought after.
This stunning bottle has all the bases covered: it originates from the village’s most important crus, it is entering its prime drinking window with nearly seven years of age, and it is the product of 460 consecutive years of one family working the same steep vineyards. Most importantly, it hails from the majestic 2010 vintage, a year Jancis Robinson MW aptly crowned “One of the very best years in the northern Rhône: possibly the best in history!” You do not want to miss out on this blue-chip investment opportunity.
We’ve shared before that Domaine Lionnet bottles Cornas in a style reminiscent of the old masters, Noël Verset and Robert Michel—i.e. painstakingly handmade wines whose beauty and delicacy is revealed only after many years of aging have melted away their brawn and tannic density. Properly aged, classically styled Cornas is an endangered species of the wine world. One can read about the near-mythical virtues of authentic, mature Cornas in practically every European wine textbook ever printed—but locating the genuine article is another story altogether. There simply isn’t much “old school” Cornas bottled anymore, and if you are fortunate enough to find it, bottles tend to either be too young to drink or overpriced. So, it’s especially thrilling to come upon this wine with nearly seven years of age, just as it’s entering its prime drinking window—and because the global wine press didn’t discover the magic occurring in Lionnet’s cellar until the 2013 vintage, this bottle enjoys a relatively modest price. You can’t lose here.
We all know the expression “bigger is better,” but in the world of wine, the opposite is often the case. Smaller vineyards, smaller cellars, and a focused and humble approach to one’s work reliably deliver the most soulful and impressive results. Domaine Lionnet is tiny; this is a one-man-show that produces a few hundred cases of wine from a mere 2 hectares of vines. Not too much has changed since the family began farming this hillside 460 years ago in 1575. Vines are grown 100% organically. All labor—including the grueling work of maintaining stone terraces—is done by hand, and the wines produced here are designed to be treasured for many years before the cork is pulled. This is card-carrying, unapologetically traditional Cornas.
This “Terre Brulée” bottling is the Lionnet family’s only wine bottled this vintage and it originates from a small handful of Granite-dominated hillside vineyards: “Chaillot,” “Combes,” “Brugeres,” and “Mazards.” The 60-100 year old vines on these parcels are known for producing amazingly dense and aromatic Syrah with definitive Cornas soil character. While it has become fashionable for properties to separate their Cornas into individual single vineyard “luxury” cuvées, the traditional method—and that of the Lionnet family—is to combine multiple parcels into one wine that communicates the totality of Cornas’ timeless and unique terroir. This antique approach extends to the cellar, where all wine travels from press to barrel via gravity flow, no additives or filtration is used, and the wine is left to age for years in neutral old French oak barrels before bottling. And as with all great traditional Cornas, after release the wine still benefits considerably from further time reposing in bottle before drinking.
In the glass, the 2010 Domaine Lionnet Cornas “Terre Brulée” shows deep, almost opaque crimson and garnet tones moving to a garnet rim. This wine’s aromatic palette is a master class in Cornas—smoky meats wrap around plump red berry fruit, red and black currants, blackberries, and oil-cured black olives. As the wine breathes and opens up, ethereal floral aromas of lavender, violets, Ethiopian coffee, and cocoa reveal themselves. Still, as is necessary for truly classic Cornas, all of the above sits on a dense iron and granite core, giving this bottle a restrained but palpable sense of power and torque. For best results with drinking this bottle now, please decant for two hours, serve in large Bordeaux stems alongside a rustic, stick-to-the-ribs classic dish like
Cassoulet. Preparing a proper Cassoulet will take time, and such is also the case with this bottle—I cannot stress strongly enough that this bottle is an investment as much as a beverage. It’s delicious and deeply satisfying now, of course, but it will only improve for at least another 12-15 years. During that time, the tannins will continue to melt away while the fruit deepens and evolves, leaving an increasingly aromatic, exotically spiced and savory/floral nose. This bottle is an ideal opportunity to explore the increasingly scarce beauty of properly aged, “vintage” style Cornas, so don’t miss out.
