Cornas and the Cult of the Stinky Red

One of the big misperceptions about wine professionals is that we sit around every day ruminating over the differences between First Growth Bordeaux, Grand Cru Burgundy, and the like. And, of course, while that does happen once in a very rare while, and while those days are truly remarkable when they do come around, they are few and far between. And anyway, most of us who live and work with wine didn’t get into this business just for the legendary bottlings. Rather, there’s a sense of discovery that brightens up most of our days: The chance to taste something new, or from a place that doesn’t quite get the respect it deserves, is what really gets us going.

I bring this up because in The Wall Street Journal this past weekend, Jay McInerney devotes his column to a wine that, outside the circles of its most dedicated fans, has remained in the shadows for far too long: Cornas.

He writes: “As far as I can tell, Cornas hasn't really been fashionable since the era of Charlemagne. The wine critic Jancis Robinson once wrote a piece describing her failure to fall in love, or even in like, with Cornas...[It] has always been a rustic wine, with formidable tannins and, sometimes, a barnyard funk that suggested a lack of hygiene in the cellar. The first few examples I tasted made me wonder if the grapes had been stomped by someone with very stinky socks.”

To which lovers of this unique wine would reply: Yum. It’s a funky wine, to be sure, often speaking of bonfire, meat, and the cage of some sort of only moderately hygienic animal at the zoo. As disgusting as this sounds, however, it tends to take on a softer personality when paired with food that can provide a counterweight to it, allowing its often unexpectedly expressive fruit to show more clearly. Even on its own, however, Cornas is a wine that, when made well and with honesty, is one of the most idiosyncratic, terroir-specific in the world. Which, for me, at least, is what really gets me excited to get to work every morning.

As we here on the East Coast stare down the barrel of yet another cold, snowy week, this is the time for popping the corks of these winter-perfect reds.

[NB: I do have one correction to make to McInerney’s article: In the fourth paragraph, he says that Cornas, Côte Rôtie, and Hermitage all “make powerful red wines exclusively from the syrah grape.” This is incorrect: Only Cornas is required to be 100% syrah. Côte Rôtie is often blended with a bit of viognier, and Hermitage, though typically all syrah, is permitted to have a percentage of white grapes in the mix.]

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Cornas Hero

Jean-Luc Colombo, one of the great winemakers of the Rhone Valley, is responsible for some of the best, most influential wines of that ancient region, especially in the north. As the Wine Spectator put it in an April 2007 interview: “[I]t's hard to imagine where the Rhône would be without him, since Colombo was among the first to travel outside the area and not only aggressively market his own wines, but also tell the story of the entire region. Colombo...purchased his parcels of vines in the 247-acre Cornas region in 1986. From that humble start, he now makes his small-production, sought-after Cornas cuvées...as well as a range of other wines, mostly from purchased grapes, reaching all the way down the valley to...Côtes du Rhône.”

I’ve been fortunate enough to taste a number of his wines in recent years, and have found myself regularly impressed by both the accuracy of expression of their terroirs of origin and their almost dangerous drinkability. A close friend of mine, Ryan Davis, the Beverage Director of Daniel Stern Restaurants in Philadelphia, was the first person to really turn me on to Colombo’s full range of wines, in particular a 1999 Cotes du Rhone Blanc “Les Figuieres” whose nutty, waxy, still amazingly lively character was stunning after all those years in bottle.

This past weekend, I headed back to Colombo’s origins with a bottle of 2002 Cornas “Les Ruchets” at a family dinner. Now, ’02 is a bit of a misleading year in the Rhone: Though the southern part of the region was clobbered by a severe late-season rain storm, “the north,” according to a Wine Spectator report form 2004, “was not as severely hit. Though rot and low ripeness levels provided some challenges, producers were slightly more upbeat than their southern colleagues.”

And with good reason. I’ve had generally good luck with the Northern Rhone 2002’s, and this one was a standout. It led off with a mature nose of truffles, leather, perfume-y violets and a hint of smoked meats. The acid on the palate was a touch high, but that really just served to keep it all fresh and make it that much more useful at the table. The fruit leaned in the red and black raspberry direction, with lingering notes of cinnamon, white pepper, green olives, and black licorice on the finish. In other words, perfect right now, and a great expression of this tiny, ancient piece of the Rhone Valley: Tied to the land, expressive, a hint rustic, and altogether as honest as wine gets. Delicious.

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