The most southerly of the northern Rhône's great reds, Cornas is pure Syrah grown on a sun-trap amphitheatre of granite terraces on the river's right bank, in the Ardèche. The name is said to derive from a Celtic word for scorched earth, and the wines answer to it: dark, dense and powerfully structured, among the most concentrated expressions the grape gives anywhere.
Long a rustic country wine, Cornas earned its reputation for near-black colour and iron tannins that demand years to soften. Made without any of the white grapes permitted at Hermitage or Côte-Rôtie, it is Syrah at its most uncompromising — a small appellation of steep, hand-worked slopes whose best bottles rank with the finest of the valley.