The older vine cuvée, the 2020 Cornas Les Vieilles Vignes is 100% Syrah. It's similarly inky hued and offers up full-bodied aromas and flavors of ripe black cherries, graphite, bouquet garni, and iron. It's deep, concentrated, and powerful on the palate, with flawless balance, building yet silky tannins, and a great, great finish. This is a straight-up thrilling Cornas to enjoy over the coming 15+ years.

Glass-staining violet color. Deeply perfumed, smoke-accented blackcurrant, cherry, smoked meat, vanilla, olive and exotic spices on the intensely perfumed nose. Shows excellent depth of flavor but comes off surprisingly energetic as well, offering mineral-driven black and blue fruit, bacon fat, olive paste and candied violet flavors that firm up steadily as the wine gains air. Polished, building tannins add shape to an impressively long, smoky finish that strongly echoes the floral, mineral and spice notes. -- Josh Raynolds

Dark, dense and black-fruited, with a dab of blackcurrant jelly among the fresh berry fruits. Ripe, but not problematically so, with a grand, noble, velvety palate. Good sense of intensity and salinity. Powerful, but lifted. Not heavy, but ripe in fruit and with great freshness. Thankfully no overripe flavours. As hoped, this has filled out well since tasting from barrel. Try to keep until 2029. From lieux-dits Combe, Patou, La Côte, Tézier, Mazards, Chaillot, old vines of Chapelle St Pierre (the same plots for the cuvée Les Chailles, but further up the slopes). Racked in May, bottled in June, released in the autumn. 20% whole bunch, three weeks maceration, 20 months in oak, 10%-15% new.

Concentrated and polished, with good energy, this hefty red features a core of sweet black cherry, singed tobacco, wood spice and mulled plum, all wrapped around a spine of iron. Reveals incense and violet notes, and though the tannins aren't too grippy, this still needs time for its tightly wound layers to unfurl. Best from 2025 through 2035. - KB