Guillaume Gilles learned to make wine from the great Robert Michel, and also had some instruction from JL Chave. He now makes wine in Michel's historic cellar and produces wine there using the same traditional methods (no or little de-stemming, natural farming, long fermentations, aging in large neutral vessels, no fining and no filtration). His top vineyard, too, comes from the Michel legacy: a patch of old vines high up the slope of the great Chaillot.
What importer Rosenthal Wine Merchant has to say about this wine...
Guillaume’s flagship Cornas comprises three separate parcels, all within the renowned vineyard of Chaillot, planted between the early-1950s and the mid-1970s: lower-lying Combe de Chaillot, with its sandier soils, offers more straightforward fruit; steep Les Terrasses, high up on the slope and poor of topsoil, contributes granitic punch and intense spiciness; and the also-terraced Grandes Mures, with its sun-soaking southward exposition, provides sumptuously dark-fruited contrabass notes and enhances the final blend’s overall structure. Guillaume vinifies and ages each parcel separately, blending them after an eighteen-month élévage in a blend of 400-liter and 600-liter oak casks of between five and fifteen years of age. This 2017 is a dense, brooding old-school powerhouse of a Cornas, with rugged structure and bottomless depth; it beckons to be cellared a bit but should unfurl slowly and majestically.
Details
-
Grape Variety
-
Vintage
2018
-
Size
750ml
-
Farming Practice
Organic
-
Style
Elegant , Fruity , Minerally
-
Sweetness
Dry
-
Body
Full Bodied