Gilles Robin Cornas 2019

From vines located at the top of the Cornas hill in the famed lieu-dit of St Pierre.  

Review for the 2016 vintage:
'Dark purple. Sexy, highly perfumed aromas of dark fruit preserves, smoky minerals, exotic spices and bacon fat. Chewy and sweet on the palate, offering concentrated blackberry, cherry preserve and spicecake flavors braced by a spine of juicy acidity. Shows excellent clarity on the impressively persistent finish, which leaves cherry liqueur and smoked meat notes behind.' 92 points, Josh Raynolds, Vinous, September 2019.

‘Since 2015, the Northern Rhône has seen a string of very good to great vintages. At the moment, I’d put 2015 and 2018 in the “great” category.’
Joe Czerwinski, The Wine Advocate, December 2019.

Gilles Robin

The Robin family have grown grapes in Crozes-Hermitage for generations, but until 1995 they were always sold to the local cooperative in Tain l'Hermitage. Today, Gilles estate bottles his entire production and consistently produces some of the very best wines of this appellation. Gilles has just 15 hectares, however most of those vineyards are fully mature at more than 40 years old.

The estate has several plots of land in the favoured ‘Les Chassis’ district just south of the Hermitage hill. The soils in this area consist of large amounts of smooth pudding stones ‘galets’ and red clay from the route the Rhône river once flowed. These richer clay based soils give a wine that is typically rounder and more generous than from some other areas of the appellation.

Owing to the large amount of mature old vines at this estate most of the wine produced is of the premium “Alberic Bouvet” cuvee. This cuvee is produced from vines averaging 40 years age. Picking is done by hand and yields are kept low at around 38 hl/ha. In the ripest years a small percentage of stems are allowed in the ferment and the wine is aged in barriques (and increasingly in larger 450 litre barrels) for about 15 months with about 15% new barrels used each year.