2015 Cornas Chaillot

Balthazar’s wines have quickly ascended to the top ranks of Cornas. The wines’ high elegant style is very well-suited to the ripe 2015 vintage. Made with whole clusters and, basically, no new wood, these are among the appellation’s most graceful wines, regardless of the year, and pricing is a gift compared to what’s going on across the region. Balthazar is blessed with many old vines – plenty of them over a century old – in some of the village’s best sites.

For my money, Franck Balthazar's elegant renditions of Cornas are among the finest of the appellation, and when it comes to value, they have no peer. Made entirely with whole clusters and with minimal oak influence, they are a Rhône traditionalist's dream, but they exhibit none of the rusticity and overt tannic structure that has marked so many old-school wines of the region over the years. I loved visiting Balthazar's tiny, ancient original cellar, which sits beneath the village's church, but his tidy new bi-level digs, behind his home and next to the ever-expanding Jean-Luc Colombo offices and winery on the east side of town, suits him just fine. "More room to work and stretch out and just more efficient. Plus it’s cleaner and closer to home [as in about 100 feet away]," he added. Balthazar's elegant style fits the 2015 vintage just right. While the wines show the depth and power that marks the year, his light touch means that these are Cornas in a graceful vein, offering supple, well-knit tannins that will ensure ageworthiness without sacrificing mid-term appeal. Franck told me that he sees a lot of similarity to 2005 in 2015, "but the tannins are more supple and round and the wines have more flesh and energy now. Maybe the richness of 2005 with the freshness of 2006 is a way to look at it."

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.