NYTimes: Asimov on FrankCornelissen

Interesting article in today’s NYTimes on Etna winemaker Frank Cornelissen:
Asimov:Cornelissen

whose goal is to “make wine with cultural baggage”. Not exactly sure what that means.

I’ve only had a couple of his wines, just to see what all the buzz was about. Was not impressed. “Interesting” was about all I could say.
Tom

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My wife and I first tried Frank’s wines 7-8 years ago. We had a Magma at Saturne in Paris. We’ve had many of his other wines since, have had dinner with him a couple of times in London and have even visited the vineyards and winery with Frank on Etna when we went to Sicily for my wife’s birthday a couple of years ago. What is wonderful about Frank is his candour and open-ness about his efforts, which is well covered in the article. He is not arrogant or dogmatic and acknowledges his challenges. As a wine consumer, there has been inconsistency in Frank’s wines but he has also produced some thrilling bottles. Worth trying the Contador and Munjabel wines. He intentionally prices the Magma very high so he can try to keep the Contador and Munjabel at more accessible prices for the broader wine consuming population. Also, the leap from Munjabel to Magma in terms of quality (in my view) is not a quantum leap. His wines also usually need a fair amount of air to open up. If you think something is amiss upon first opening a bottle, pour a couple of glasses and see what happens with some time. As he doesn’t use SO2, the wines are often highly reductive upon opening.

If refusing to use any SO2, even when looking at blatant flaws and even outright faults in a wine, isn’t dogmatic, I don’t know what is. I’m glad some people have experienced sound bottles of his wine. To me they are nothing more than a myth. And I’ve tried quite a few. I have no interest in wines from someone who is fine with a huge percentage of flawed and faulty bottles in the name of producing something “natural”.

I can’t figure out how this makes sense, Ken:

Literally everything in this post is wrong or severe understatement. Hell, if you account for the extraordinary rate of failed bottles, Cornelissen is one of the most expensive producers in Italy. My hit rate is 1 of 5 (a susucaru), with 1 barely OK bottle and 3 undrinkable. I think the aggregate cost for those 5 was over $200.

I think if you asked me to name the worst producer in the world, I’d go with Cornelissen. Others may make worse wine, but they’re not trying to make good wines and their wines aren’t being sold at the best wine stores. If you go into a Chambers Street-style store and pick a bottle to drink tonight, the worst bottle in the store is probably the Cornelissen. That is an impressive level of incompetence that I don’t think anyone can match.

I’ve never had one that was actually drinkable.

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My wife and I went to Burdock and Co. in Vancouver and one of his wines was offered by the glass. We were sitting at the bar and the young wine loving bartender was so enamoured with it. Undecided whether to get a bottle for the two of us or just a glass.

Luckily there was something else we wanted to try so we just had a glass. It was vile. I could barely finish the glass. It literally tasted like red sausage water.

Red sausage water sounds like it could be a hot new trend…sort of like bone broth last year.

Count me in the skeptic in the Cornelissen camp, my wife even more so. In general I just haven’t ever found a “natural” red that I liked, even Ganevat’s don’t do much for me (and I generally love his whites).

Zero for three here with a range from bizarre curiosity to utterly unpotable. I would love to be able to produce $100 bottles of wine that were completely flawed beyond consumption, have people buy them and apparently not care. Would lower my anxiety level immensely.

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+1 (x1000)


The origin of winemaking is preservation of the harvest, and the innate beauty of the fruit/site. Failing to preserve the grape is a failure of winemaking at it’s most very basic level.

If I bought a table from a woodworker and it fell apart two months later because the wood had termites in it, I would be pissed. If the woodworker ran around showing off how he doesn’t ever take any measures to prevent termites from being in the wood because he a “natural” woodworker, it would be negligent. However, if it’s wine people think the winemaker is something amazing?

I get the attraction of the dogma of “natural”, but not the reality of it. Which for me is close to David Z’s experience.

The wine world isn’t a binary choice between natural and manufactured, in the middle is a whole range of crafted wines that are where I am going to buy my wines from.

I’m 0/3 as well. He’s having a wank, and I’m not paying for it anymore.

I simply don’t understand the demonization of Sulpher in the winery, particularly by winemakers, who also support organic grape growing (where Sulpher is the backbone of powdery mildew prevention). It’s ok in the vineyard but a crime in the winery?

Sans soufre wines are not nearly the issue for me because decent examples from conscientious producers are not that hard to find, but winemakers pouring flawed garbage spouting about their organic grapes not needing SO2 makes my head explode.

Last-I don’t get how wines that range from 15-17% represent natural (or the idea that Nerello Mascalese is at the border of ripening while producing grapes with sugar levels matching those finished alcohols).

Well, I guess I will be the outlier here.

I’ve had all his bottlings across a couple years, and I’ve only had one really off bottle. I do like weird natural wine though. His top bottlings (magma, and the Munjebel Rosso variants) can be a touch too high octane for me, but his white was probably my favorite. That one at least, I havent had my own bottle. I’ve drank it at a wine dinner, so I don’t know how many may have been discarded during the dinner. I sat next to Frank and several of us went out to another restaurant later, he seemed like a nice and interesting guy.

I completely agree. To add to the whole sulfur thing, the amount needed in the vineyard when there’s a lot of humidity is terrible for the environment. The amount needed in a wine to keep it from going bad is generally harmless to almost everyone.

A feature piece on Cornelissen? Really? I spent a week on the north side of Etna in March, and there are so, so many more interesting stories to be written. The amount of potential (and current/previous releases) there is staggering.

Also, another +1 on Marcus’ fine reply.

My next truly enjoyable Cornelissen wine will be my first. But then I’ve given up trying anymore, so I reckon I’ll never really know.

Just to add to the chorus here. I supported Cornelissen very early on by buying his early releases, mostly due to my strong overall interest in Etna’s wines (there weren’t as many producers to choose from ten or more years ago as there are today…). Several years later, I simply decided that I’d been had and was happy to let other people take over.
Moreover, that old canard about pricing Magma as he does in order to “subsidise” the other bottlings is total, utter nonsense. His other bottlings aren’t cheap either - far from it. And Magma has been from day one, and probably still is, by far the most expensive wine on Etna, which can only de described as utterly ludicrous given the competition.

Me, too.

My first one was a Munjebel that was, well, interesting. Bought from CSW.

But after that I have had 2 quite nice Contadinos and 1 nice Susacaru.

Both Contadino’s were restaurant list purchases; I probably wouldn’t buy another Cornelissen unless it was easily returnable (i.e., like in a restaurant) if bad.

I think what Ken may have been getting at when he said that Frank is undogmatic is that he does not disparage conventionally made wines or regard them as inauthentic in the way that some “natural” winemakers do. He once presented a tasting for us in Oxford, and I remember asking him what he regarded as the best red and white wines he’d ever had. His answer was, if I remember correctly, 1964 Pétrus and 1982 Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet, which struck me as very respectable choices. It was very disarming—as I think anyone here would find meeting him.

I don’t own any of Frank’s wines, and agree with much of what’s been said here. Refusing to use sulfur and then sterilizing your winery with liquid nitrogen seems borderline perverse to me, though he has his logic. That notwithstanding, I do think the winemaking has evolved here, and that recent releases are more stable and consistently compelling than what was being offered only a few years ago. I guess the best analogy is reinventing the wheel: Frank started out with a pentagon; now he’s reached the octagon, which actually rolls pretty well on a slope. Personally I’d think drinking these in Europe is a safer bet, and that the chances of failure are higher the further the wine has traveled.

I also don’t agree with the idea that these wine need air to show their best. They evolve very quickly in the glass and if you left them alone you could easily come back to a nasty surprise. I would follow them closely personally.

Just to add a contrary view I have been buying the wines since the very beginning and have easily had over 200 bottles and I have enjoyed everyone of them.

I recently opened an early Magma that was close to 10 years old that had some storage issues and it was absolutely beautiful.

Marcus - I have to say I find your comments about a fellow winemaker who happens to be well respected around the world by many in the wine business to be off putting and in poor taste. You should listen to Frank’s interview on Levi Daltons I’ll Drink to That podcast it is very honest and he admits in the beginning that he was trying to make a wine that was the opposite of the wines he did not like rather than the wine he wanted to make. He has changed his practices over the years and evolved quite a bit as winemaker.

Robert, you must have about the highest tolerance for VA, brett, and high ABV of anyone. It’s hard for me to even believe that you’ve enjoyed that many bottles of Frank’s wines with zero failures, considering several bottles I’ve opened were so faulty that I wouldn’t even put the wine in my mouth (I prefer not to drink, or even taste and spit, nail polish remover laced with alcohol and loads of brett). I really don’t see anything controversial or in poor taste about Marcus’ comments. I think it’s important to be honest when someone is making wines, and selling them at quite high prices, that are not fit for commercial sale or even consumption by many people’s standards. From talking to other people ITB, that outlook seems a lot more common than respect with regard to Frank’s wines.

I have quite a few bottles of his wines in my collection. I’ve been fortunate enough to have dinner with him when he has visited Philly, and he’s a fascinating guy to talk to. I always enjoy trying his wines as they are invariably interesting, if intellectual exercises. Are they my favorite wines in the world? No. But intriguing and well worth trying. A little VA or Brett is not a fault in the right context (Musar, Beaucastel…), it just makes things more interesting!

“Wine is such a complex thing, and V.A. is part of wine. If you have none, it’s a flaw. It’s part of fermentation. It’s a question of balance. Life is harmony.”
~Serge Hochar