2016 Cornas

After the massive, built-for-the ages 2015s made here, Pierre-Marie Clape said that this benchmark domaine’s 2016 bottlings “show that Cornas can be elegant, not just masculine and massive.” These are by no means delicate wines but, in comparison to most vintages, there’s a greater degree of finesse and a finer grain to the tannins than usual. I detected the usual Clape power and structure, but found this vintage’s wines showing more fruit to the fore than usual. Smart buyers know to look for Clape’s Côtes-du-Rhône, which, like his Cornas bottlings, is made entirely with whole clusters. It is sourced from vineyards that are located at the southern end of the Cornas appellation, on the river side of the highway, and include a majority of vines that were planted back in the 1890s.

Pierre-Marie Clape told me he finds 2016 to be “a vintage of freshness and tenderness” because the balance of fruit and tannins is “so harmonious.” Clape noted the bright acidity that marks so many wines, “will also help them age well.” During my last visit I was able to go through some barrels of 2017 wines from the usual vineyards that make up the domaine’s two Cornas bottlings, all of which had recently completed their malolactic fermentations. Clape is less sanguine about the ‘17s than the ‘16s (or the ‘15s, for that matter) as he is wary of the ripeness achieved by much of the fruit in the region. “If things go well, we’ll probably have another 2009, which would be a great thing,” he told me, “but in a lot of vineyards the fruit came in with a pH in the 3.8 range, an issue if you want to make the energetic and detailed wines we do.”