| Score: |
95 VM.
"Inky ruby. Vibrant, highly perfumed blue fruit, potpourri and incense aromas display outstanding clarity and pick up exotic spice and smoky mineral notes with aeration. Pure, focused and lively in the mouth, offering appealingly sweet blueberry, cherry preserve and violet pastille flavors that show superb depth and no rough edges. Deepens slowly on the impressively long, energetic finish, which features resonating florality and sneaky, slow-mounting tannins. In Franck Balthazar's opinion, the 2016 vintage doesn't get the respect it deserves. He compares the wines, in terms of sheer quality, with the great 2010s. Balthazar hastens to add that the style of the two years is quite different, with "the 2010s structured and for the cellar while the 2016s are about excellent balance." That balance, he believes, will serve the wines well in the cellar, "but you aren't going to be obligated to hold them because of their freshness and fine tannins." Once again Balthazar has made some of the prettiest wines of not just Cornas but the whole northern Rhône." Josh Raynolds, Vinous.com, Mar 2019 |