Marcel Juge Cornas Cuvée C 2000

Reviews

RW

"In the 1970s and 1980s, Marcel Juge was an icon to those who found magic in traditionally made Cornas. Today he is largely forgotten, though a small amount of wine was made in the 2000s under his and his daughter Olga’s names. Marcel’s early Cornas were the real deal . . . . A contemporary of Clape, Verset, Robert Michel and René Balthazar, he continued into old age to make a trickle of wine for his family from his old 'Petite Syrah' vines in Champelrose and Cayret. Marcel was always firmly in the traditional camp. He avoided destemming, and he crushed by foot. 'Mechanical pigeage destroys the crop,' as he told Remington Norman. 'With your feet you feel the cuve — its temperature and the cap, it’s much more gentle.' He used wild yeasts only: 'I don’t muck around with bought yeasts — you just end up with Bordeaux.' And he aged his wine in half-century-old casks. Juge detested the taste of oak and sought fully ripe fruit and velvety texture in his wines. 'You should be able to smell richness in a wine — it’s not a sugar or a sweetness, it’s a proper ripeness' is how he explained this to Livingstone-Learmonth. But while a staunch traditionalist, Juge went his own way in one respect. Rather than making a single Cornas blend like his contemporaries — or making separate climat bottlings like the next generation — he produced two wines that were a blend of lieux dits. His famed Cuvée C (for 'Côteaux') was blended from vines on multiple slopes."