2012 Saint-Péray Ongrie

I tasted through this year's set of wines with assistant winemaker Lionel Fraisse, who comes from a family of growers in Saint-Péray and earned a degree in enology before joining head winemaker and director Albéric Mazoyer at this historic domain. He told me that he likes the contrast of 2013 versus 2012 for white wines "because the 2013s are easy to drink while you wait for the '12s." The same can be said for the 2011s, which Fraisse described as "elegant, focused and accessible but not loose or soft." Pretty much the same goes for the reds in those vintages, in his opinion, and he added that "because of the concentration of the 2012s they'll be a good surprise for aging but they don't require it. That's what most would consider the classic style of Cornas, or the old style as you might call it."

The rebirth of Saint-Peray as a serious white wine region has been so rapid, Alberic Mazoyer told me in November, "that it seems incredible that a lot of it was sold as Cotes-du-Rhone blanc less than ten years ago [which was the case with Clape, for example], such was the diminished image of theappellation."Voge was for all intents the only source of top-notch Saint-Peray until recently and while there's now competition from big guys like Chapoutier, Jaboulet and Cuilleron, not to mention a number of small growers, Voge is still at the top of the hill, as it were. Mazoyer added, "there's no question that nature has been kind to Cornas for a while now, with only 2002 a genuinely bad vintage, and many recent years have been among the best of a lifetime, like 2010 and 2005."Under Mazoyer's watch the wines at Voge have become more immediately appealing while maintaining a level of structure that he said "will support cellaring, but it won't be as mandatory as it was a generation ago." The reputation for Cornas as "fierce, sauvageand even unfriendly" was much more a function of rustic or careless winemaking than anything that the soil or climate would convey, he said. Yes, it's warmer here than it is farther north, "but it's not an obligation for warm regions to make rough wines, and this is hardly a hot appellation," he mused as we watched heavy snow accumulate in the village on November 21st.