2018 Alain Voge Cornas Les Vieilles Vignes- France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (4/22/2021)
Opened, one glass removed, recorked with no fanfare, and tasted again after about a week. This is a wow wine, perhaps the best Cornas I have had. Violet floral nose. Palate is dark fruit with a roasted meat and roasted spice component. ABV is 14.5 but less noticeable than the 13.5 ABV white Rhone I had a few days ago. The palate fits together. It’s not like a mix of, let’s say, pineapple, creosote and coffee beans. It is well harmonized with each flavor playing off the others. With a week of air, the tannin was not fierce, but who knows if this is how it will age in the cellar. Extremely smooth, which I did not expect, with no rough edges. Depending upon how this develops, it could be exceptional. (93 pts.)
Thanks for the note. I’ve often enjoyed Voge Cornas and have been fortunate enough to visit their crazy-cramped cellar a couple of times. I’ll look for the 2018 VV.
Nothing fancy. Just a strong fist. This was a very young Northern Rhone Syrah and I am 69 years old. When I was younger and had plenty of time, I lacked the patience to age these wines. Now that I have the patience, I no longer have the time, so this method works as a compromise, but I would recommend that people who have the time to age wine should do their best to develop the patience. I only wish that I had bought some Hermitage for long term aging when I was 30 years old.
The other approach I’ve been using is splitting wine into swing top glass containers (125, 250, 375 mL). I’ve been keeping them in a small beverage fridge. I have noticed these have an imperfect seal, since the esters from the wine fill the fridge with a great aroma! The downside is that means the wine is oxidizing and losing aromatics quicker than with a cork seal. Others have favored using ‘Boston Rounds’, which most likely has a better seal.
For bold, young wines, though, the swing top approach has held up well for at least a week, and (in my unblinded perceptions) helped with opening up those wines. Recorking a 4/5 full bottle should have a similar effect: the surface area of the exposed wine is larger, but the oxygen available is limited to the head space created by removing a glass.
Last night, I was reading a section of a Tom Stevensen book that was on interpreting wine’s color, and they used a picture of a young Cornas in glass to illustrate “black”
