Wines

Sourced from a high-altitude site near Les Rieux in which Gilles owns 1.2 total hectares, this combination of two-thirds Marsanne and one-third Roussanne fermented in steel and spent six months in wood before bottling. It offers a nice sense of equilibrium (even at higher degrees of alcohol), with notes of honey and almond nougat framing a thick blast of apricot.

From the vineyard of Les Peyrouses, a site just east of Cornas in which Gilles also owns 150-year-old Syrah, this cuvée comprises 80% Marsanne and 20% Roussanne, from a third of a hectare’s worth of vines planted between 2009 and 2013. Its soils of sand, clay, and large pudding-stones render a white wine of formidable amplitude but excellent focus, given shape by a touch of appealing bitterness on the finish. This undergoes an eight-month élevage in a combination of 400-liter barrels (10% new) and steel, with malolactic fermentation finishing completely.

A few years ago, Guillaume acquired a 0.3-hectare plot of 40-year-old Gamay (a smaller-berried variant known locally as Gamay Saint-Romain, distinct from the Gamay of Beaujolais) planted in pure high-acid granite at 600 meters altitude in the Ardèche, and he produces a mere 800 bottles per vintage on average—although he will soon augment that with 0.4 hectares worth of more recently planted vines. As with his Cornas, he refrains from de-stemming his Gamay, but he allows fermentation to proceed semi-carbonically here. This is well-structured and bare-knuckled in its minerality, offering tremendous energy and a certain intensity that speaks perhaps more of Cornas than Gamay, yet still with an underlying sense of lift and purity of fruit.

This wine, feral and exciting, issues from an old vines parcel on the flats in Cornas. The soil is sand and clay overlain with large “galet” stones. The vinification is the same as is used for the more prestigious wines of the cellar. Best described as a “mini-Cornas”, it’s outside of its generic category of Côtes du Rhône.

Coming from the lower portion of the Chaillot vineyard where the soil is granite with a slightly sandy consistency, this is typically the most charming wine out of Guillaume’s cellar, more relaxed and approachable than the regular Cornas cuvée, less ferociously tannic (with the Syrah all destemmed). It is loaded with pure red fruits of cherry and raspberry delicately seasoned with a fine, smoky quality. This wine is not particularly heavy on the palate, showing an elegance and dynamism that is reminiscent of Pinot Noir. Sadly, production is tiny here: only 15 released to the US!

This is the grand wine of this tiny domaine. The vines are situation on the higher slopes of the Chaillot vineyard. The “terroir” is more complex here with a mixture of soil types and expositions. There are terraces of pure granite that are oriented east – southeast; then, these are supplemented by terraces that sit on a clay-limestone base that have a full southern exposure. The grapes are never destemmed, the cuvaison is long (30 days) and the élevage is in demi-muids for eighteen months. As with the other wines of the domaine, this wine is neither fined nor filtered.

Les Rieux is situated up above the main amphitheater of Cornas at 400-450 meters altitude. Guillaume acquired acreage here in 2010, immediately planting vines on its soils of white granite. Whereas before the turn of the century there was really nothing planted above 300 meters in Cornas, today’s warmer climate allows for wines from plots like this one to reach full maturity at modest levels of alcohol. Robert Michel, upon tasting the first vintage of this wine, remarked that it reminded him of the Cornas he and his village-mates made in the ‘70s and ’80s. Certainly, the bright, spice-saturated red character of the fruit here provides a fascinating contrast to Gilles’ more brooding flagship Cornas.