2017 Cornas Chaillot

Despite the low yields that he attained in 2017, “thanks to very little rain and the hot weather, which didn’t break until toward the end of summer,” Thierry Allemand is quite satisfied with the wines, which he calls “richer than usual, because of the small grapes, but not so structured that they’ll need long aging.” He pointed to late flowering hindering a normal crop, but especially pointed out that there was roughly 50% less rain than usual during the growing season, “and so we got small bunches and tiny grapes, with not much juice.” Interestingly, Allemand added, “even though the grapes were small, so lots of skin presence during the winemaking, the tannins aren’t so hard.” He said that a rough comparison might be made to 2009 in that regard. “A hot year can mean lots of tannin and, of course, overripeness, but those don’t look to be problems.”