2018 Cornas

Olivier Clape told me that he thinks his family’s 2020s, which were still not bottled when I visited in April, deserve patience. If one thing is for sure at Domaine A. Clape, there’s no rush to get the wines into bottle or out in the market, at least for the two Cornas. I have found that Renaissance is inching closer and closer to the grand vin in quality, especially if one puts value on earlier drinking. That was definitely the case with the 2019 and 2018 vintages, but, as usual, the “classic” Cornas can be a tricky wine to judge early on.

When I tasted the 2019s and 2018s with Pierre-Marie Clape, he offered the opinion that “the 2019s have things in common with 2015 and 2010, but the tannins don’t come at you so aggressively and there’s also more freshness to them.” He thinks that the 2018s have similar qualities but noted that, in Cornas, the yield was very low, so there can be “a more backward character than you have with the 2019s, at least in this region.” Talking about aging when it comes to this domaine’s wines is amusing, and also interesting, he said, “because even in a lighter year, which we don’t seem to be getting anymore, our Cornas is good for at least 20 years, and most of the time it isn’t ready to go before it is 10 years old.”

Pierre-Marie and Olivier Clape have, unsurprisingly, made the most of the 2018 and 2017 vintages. They produced wines that show the ripeness that marks both years with plenty of freshness and good structure as well. Pierre-Marie Clape said that what distinguished 2017 “was how hot and dry it was in the summer and, especially, how low the yields were, just 27 hl/ha instead of what we usually get, which is more like 37 hl/ha.” It was low enough to decide not to produce the Renaissance bottling of Cornas. He also noted that the grapes were smaller than normal, thus increasing skin-to-juice ratios but “luckily, that didn’t have too great an effect on increased tannins.” Indeed, he pointed out that this probably helped to give the wines desirable structure and ensured that they weren’t “like some hot-vintage wines, with too much weight and not enough solidity.” At this point the Clapes are highly optimistic about their 2018s, which, as was the case across the appellation, “finally got a good amount of winter rain, plus some more in late spring, and gave a healthy yield, which was a relief,” Pierre-Marie Clape said. Olivier Clape added that while there’s plenty of richness in the 2018s “it’s not like 2017 because there’s also freshness and precision.” Like a number of his colleagues he said that at this early stage the wines look to be a “marriage of 2017 for the power and 2016 for the energy.” The Clape wines are never short on power, and the 2017s and 2018s are no exception.