2004 Cornas Chante-Perdrix

Winemaker Jacques Grange oversees a wide collection of wines for this large negociant and vineyard owner, but the impressive level of quality, especially at the upper end of the range, makes clear that he has no trouble consistently making highly expressive wines.Grange is able to offer informed opinions of vintages in the Northern Rhone owing to his work in appellations stretching from Cote-Rotie to Cornas.Vintage 2004, he says, brought uniform quality up and down the river, while 2003 "was simply surreal, with vines shut down all over the Rhone Valley.We got ripeness but often not maturity in this crazy year, and we had to harvest through all of the Northern Rhone virtually at once, starting on August 19th, one month earlier than usual."The successes here in 2003 owe largely to brutal selection that cut production levels dramatically.