2014 Cornas Chaillot

The good news here is that Franck Balthazar will soon be releasing his first white wine, a 2016 Saint-Pèray sourced from a 0.3-hectare plot of vines that he planted in 2013, and it looks awfully good. The bad news is that there’s only a single barrel of it, for now. The freshness of the 2014 vintage played nicely into Balthazar’s elegant, even understated style, which reminds me a lot of that of Thierry Allemand, which isn’t surprising given the use of whole clusters at both addresses. Franck was one of a number of winemakers who compared their 2014s to their ‘12s, and he suggested that his own wines will likely be drinking well at least a few years before his ‘13s, which he thinks will be long-term agers despite their relative elegance.

Over the last decade, the soft-spoken Franck Balthazar has emerged as one of the most consistently top-notch winemakers not just in Cornas, but in the entire Rhône Valley. Winemaking here is very traditional, utilizing whole clusters and only 10% to 15% new oak "just to maintain the usual rotation of wood, not for aroma or flavor." Balthazar's Cornas bottlings are some of the most elegant of the appellation, but their light touch can be deceiving. They have also proven to be excellent cellar candidates even though they show a highly seductive character in their youth. There's a new wine here starting with 2015, a Crozes-Hermitage that Balthazar sources from the limestone-rich soils of Mercurol, at the southern end of the appellation. This site is quite close to Cornas as the crow flies, "but on a completely different soil, which is really interesting for me to work with," Franck said.