2012 Cornas Chante-Perdrix

One-third new oak is now the maximum percentage used for any wine here at Delas, and that number really only applies to the big guns, meaning the Côte-Rôtie La Landonne and Hermitage Bessards. Speaking of oak, winemaker Claire Darnaud told me that there's a lot of experimenting going on with matching coopers to individual wines. "Some types of barrels brings stronger tannins that might not be necessary for wines like Hermitage or Cornas but good for, say, Crozes," she said, "so we're looking at the oak tannins and how they give structure and when it's a good or bad thing."

Claire Darnaud, who grew up just outside Tournon and Saint-Jean-de-Muzols and has been working alongside winemaker Jacques Grange since 2009, walked me through this year's set of wines as well as some examples from the outstanding 2010 vintage."Two thousand twelve made wines that are expressive young," she told me, adding that one aspect she likes of this vintage is that "the sites are expressive of themselves without a lot of tannin to work through, like 2010 and 2005, or strong ripeness that can obscure the fruit, as with 2009 and 2003."Unfortunately production was down, yet again, which has put pressure on Delas' traditional markets, even as Asia, for one example, continues to increase its demand for northern Rhone wines.The good news about 2011 is the wines' vivacity, Darnaud told me, attributing that trait to the cool summer that helped the fruit maintain acid levels and slowed down the buildup of sugar.That said, Darnaud believes that with rare exception the wines are meant to be drunk sooner rather than later, "for their fresh fruit.They mostly don't have the concentration to age for a really long time."