2008 Cornas Chaillot

According to Franck Balthazar, "What makes 2009 such a special vintage is the fact that the wines are rich and concentrated but still very fresh." He believes they will be appealing on release and doesn't foresee the wines ever really shutting down "as they do in most powerful years." Balthazar is another Cornas producer who is convinced that the 2008s "will be punished for the sins of their relatives even though the wines from the southern part of the northern Rhone have good depth and complexity, without dilution or too-high acidity, which is the stereotype." That's especially the case for Cornas, he added: "Since it's warmer here than anywhere else in the north, our vines are mostly south-facing, and there are more old vines in Cornas than in any appellation of the north."

"I prefer 2006 to 2005, especially now and I'm sure for the next few years," Franck Balthazar told me. "The 2005s are really severe, structured wines and will need a long time to lose their tannins. The 2006s, on the other hand, are balanced, fresh and very pure. They're my style of wine and they'll live for a long time without ever really shutting down. It's a huge mistake to open the 2005s right now and an even bigger mistake to misjudge the elegance of the '06s as a weakness. Balance is everything and that's the personality of 2006." Balthazar described 2008 as "a very, very difficult year unless your vines were in the best sites, with good wind and sun exposure." He added that 2007 is a year he likes very much "because the fruit is really expressive and pure, and the tannins are woven into the fruit rather than attached to it." He believes the wines "will never shut down hard."Balthazar works exclusively with old demi-muids that average around six years of age.