2020 Cornas Jouvet

Domaine François Villard is yet another domaine that has been steadily but also dramatically shifting its style of wines from extroverted and oak-driven to elegant and even restrained, especially regarding barrel regimens. A little over a decade ago, François Villard’s wines were poster children for the modern Rhône wine style: ripe, weighty and heavily oaked. Today, the wines are typically focused and energetic. Villard has backed off new barrels and has begun using more whole cluster fruit, making the wines more perfumed and spicier. Most of today’s wines would be unrecognizable to somebody who last drank them 10 or 12 years ago. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Villard’s 2020s are the strongest overall set of wines I have had here.