2013 Saint-Joseph Les Vinsonnes

Albéric Mazoyer told me that he'll be surprised if the 2014s "ever really close up, because the fruit is so extroverted and the tannins are already harmonious." That's not to say that the wines won't age, such is their balance and depth of fruit. As elsewhere, production was down severely here in 2014, and Mazoyer decided, as with 2013, not to bottle the estate's flagship Cornas Les Vieilles Fontaines. He opted instead to blend it into the other two bottlings "to maximize their quality, which was tremendous in both '13 and '14, even if the amount of wine wasn't so tremendous."

I tasted through this year's set of wines with assistant winemaker Lionel Fraisse, who comes from a family of growers in Saint-Péray and earned a degree in enology before joining head winemaker and director Albéric Mazoyer at this historic domain. He told me that he likes the contrast of 2013 versus 2012 for white wines "because the 2013s are easy to drink while you wait for the '12s." The same can be said for the 2011s, which Fraisse described as "elegant, focused and accessible but not loose or soft." Pretty much the same goes for the reds in those vintages, in his opinion, and he added that "because of the concentration of the 2012s they'll be a good surprise for aging but they don't require it. That's what most would consider the classic style of Cornas, or the old style as you might call it."