2011 Cornas

Olivier Clape believes that the 2012s have been easy to drink from the very beginning "because it's a vintage that's generous and round. The tannins won't ever be in the way of the fruit, like in 2010," a year that he described as "one of the best that my grandfather and father can remember." He told me that this is truly a golden age for the northern Rhone because "what's considered a weak vintage today would have been considered a success when my grandfather was young." Olivier attributes that to more generally warm growing seasons but also to "more perspective and education, and to building on the experience of our parents and grandparents." He pointed out that things are more controlled now and that much more attention is paid by wineries every step of the way from flowering to bottling: "the vineyard, the harvest, selection in the cellar, more precise bottling, everything. Nothing should happen by accident anymore; there's no excuse." The 2011 Cornas bottlings here show impressive depth and power for the vintage, which Clape describes as "richer than 2008, with an open personality but plenty of material to age for a while." Our conversation led to a discussion of lighter vintages in Cornas, prompting Olivier to open a bottle of his '08, which was putting on an almost Burgundian display of red fruits and flowers, with smoke and licorice notes in the background. It's plenty delicious now but balanced to reward at least another decade of patience. Clape said that a well-made Cornas "can easily age and improve for over ten years, even from a rainy year, especially if the fruit came from old vines on hillsides," which happens to be exactly what his family has at their disposal.

I tasted this year's set of wines with Olivier Clape, who told me that things in the cellar were now "like in the old days" because his grandfather, Auguste, "got a new knee and now he's everywhere, all the time." Indeed, the senior Clape was more in evidence this past November than I've noticed in years, and highly animated to boot. The 2010s here are the best wines I've had from Clape in recent memory, meaning even better than the outstanding 2005s, which is saying something. Olivier said that yields played a huge part in the success of the 2010s, pointing out that their vineyard gave them less than 25 hl/ha, as opposed to about 40/hl/ha in 2011. He calls 2010 "a lot like 1990," while 2011 is "quite classic, with very good freshness and balance." The family's hillside vineyards' exposures benefited enormously from the sun in 2010, Olivier said, "but there's great acidity to balance it, which was less the case in 2009 and what makes it a unique vintage." The Clapes recently purchased another hectare of vines in Saint-Peray that include about 40% roussanne, which Olivier says will help bring weight, texture and power to that bottling in the future and also make it more age-worthy, as the wine right now is one that the Clapes "like to drink young, while the fruit is fresh."