For that seductive combination of wild earthiness and pure-fruited drinkability so unique to Syrah, there's no place on earth like Cornas. It's the southernmost appellation in the Northern Rhône Valley and here Syrah reaches what might be its most archetypal expression. Wild animal savoriness underpins huge black and purple fruit, full body matches bright granitic acidity, and the wines combine structure for decades of cellaring with drink-me-now deliciousness. And in Cornas, no winemaker is hotter than Guillaume Gilles.
Today, we're pleased to offer a small amount of Guillaume Gilles' extraordinary wines in multiple vintages, including the rare whites and nouvelle R bottling..
Cornas is also a place where legends loom large. The winemakers who originally made Cornas what it is, people like Noel Verset and Marcel Juge, have largely retired or passed away. Guillaume was lucky to work for years alongside one of these legends, Robert Michel. And that was after he'd worked under Hermitage legend Jean-Louis Chave! When Michel decided to retire in 2006, he passed down his holdings to his young protegé. As a result, Guillaume leases some of the best and oldest parcels of Syrah in Chaillot, one of Cornas' two top vineyards. He even inherited Michel's cellar and continues Michel's world-class winemaking.
This is Cornas made the way the legends do it. All vines are farmed organically and by hand, and all fruit is left in whole clusters and fermented with wild/ambient yeasts before being aged in large neutral oak barrels. Despite the ever-rising pressure to produce riper, smoother, oakier and younger-drinking wines, Gilles has persevered as one of the last “purist” producers in Cornas.
His Cornas is an obvious standout, and the top wine of the domaine. It exhibits that classic combination of roasted meats, violets, blackberries, smoke, black pepper, and scorched earth with that famous granitic backbone. The vines for his Cornas come from the higher part of the Chaillot slope. A 30 day maceration leads to a complex, concentrated, structured wine.
His "Les Peyrouses" rouge, labeled as a Cotes du Rhone, is anything but, and should not even be thought of as such. From a vineyard just a stone's throw from the Cornas perimeter, it's made from vines that are almost 150 years old. It's a stunning wine and should be spoken of in the same breath as his Cornas.
Hi Cornas Les Rieux is planted to vines 450 meters above the main amphitheater of Cornas. Always too "cold" to be a recognized cru, today’s warmer climate allows the fruit here to reach maturity and is now recognized as one of his most sought after cuvees. The purity of the fruit here is wonderful juxtaposition to the flagship Cornas.
We also have a smattering of two vintages his Les Peyrouses Blanc and Saint Peray.
Guillaume only works about four hectares and only a tiny amount – fewer than 100 cases – made it into the States this year. Quantities are extremely limited, with just bottles of each available of all.
To order, please click here. Store pickup and shipping are available, as always. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to respond to this email.
Prices are some of the lowest in the U.S. No further discounts available.
1) Guillaume Gilles Saint-Peray 2021 750ml
Sale Price: $74.99/btl! BUY NOW - 4 bottles available
Sourced from a high-altitude site near Les Rieux in which Gilles owns 1.2 total hectares, thereby ensuring heightened production going forward, this combination of two-thirds Marsanne and one-third Roussanne fermented in steel and spent six months in wood before bottling. It offers a nice sense of equilibrium even at 14.5% alcohol, with notes of honey and almond nougat framing a thick blast of apricot.
2) Guillaume Gilles Saint-Peray 2022 750ml
Sale Price: $74.99/btl! BUY NOW - 6 bottles available
Sourced from a high-altitude site near Les Rieux in which Gilles owns 1.2 total hectares, thereby ensuring heightened production going forward, this combination of two-thirds Marsanne and one-third Roussanne fermented in steel and spent six months in wood before bottling. It offers a nice sense of equilibrium even at 14.5% alcohol, with notes of honey and almond nougat framing a thick blast of apricot.
3) Guillaume Gilles Cotes du Rhône "Les Peyrouses" Blanc 2022 750ml
Sale Price: $44.99/btl! BUY NOW - 4 bottles available
From the vineyard of Les Peyrouses, a site just east of Cornas in which Gilles also owns 150 year-old Syrah, this cuvée comprises 80% Marsanne and 20% Roussanne, from a third of a hectare’s worth of vines planted between 2009 and 2013. Its soils of sand, clay, and large pudding-stones render a white wine of formidable amplitude but excellent focus, given shape by a touch of appealing bitterness on the finish. This 2022 underwent an eight-month élevage in a combination of 400-liter barrels (10% new) and steel, with malolactic fermentation finishing completely.
4) Guillaume Gilles Cotes du Rhône "Les Peyrouses" Rouge 2021
Sale Price: $69.99/btl! BUY NOW - 4 bottles available
Hailing from the flats just to the east of the Cornas appellation, the “Les Peyrouses” Rouge is a remarkable and unique wine: pure Syrah planted in the 1870s, during phylloxera’s initial outbreak, and constituting the very first grafted vines in the area. The soil in this vineyard is a mix of sand and clay, with loads of large limestone galets, and the wine Guillaume coaxes from these astonishingly old vines is so powerful in its fruit that he gives it twelve months élévage instead of eighteen. (Also, as a testament to its sheer power, he always presents it after his Cornas during visits to his cellar.)
5) Guillaume Gilles Cotes du Rhône "Les Peyrouses" Rouge 2020 Magnums
1.5L Magnum Price: $139.99/btl! BUY NOW - 2 MAGS available
Hailing from the flats just to the east of the Cornas appellation, the “Les Peyrouses” Rouge is a remarkable and unique wine: pure Syrah planted in the 1870s, during phylloxera’s initial outbreak, and constituting the very first grafted vines in the area. The soil in this vineyard is a mix of sand and clay, with loads of large limestone galets, and the wine Guillaume coaxes from these astonishingly old vines is so powerful in its fruit that he gives it twelve months élévage instead of eighteen. (Also, as a testament to its sheer power, he always presents it after his Cornas during visits to his cellar.)
6) Guillaume Gilles Cornas "Les Rieux" Nouvelle R 2021 750ml
Sale Price: $99.99/btl! BUY NOW - 3 bts available
The heart and soul of Gilles’ domaine is the parcel of the great Chaillot vineyard that he received from Robert Michel. His Chaillot is deep, soaring and powerful. In short, classic Cornas. The Nouvelle R is a totally different expression. The “R” stands for Les Rieux, a vineyard that Gilles planted in 2010 that sits at 450 meters high, above the amphitheater of Cornas. It’s a vineyard of white granite soils that had never been planted before because historically people worried about the grape achieving proper ripeness. Now, for many growers, ripeness doesn’t seem like a godsend, but something to battle against. Working a vineyard like Les Rieux starts making a lot of sense. Gilles says that Robert Michel remarked that the wine reminded him of Cornas from the 70s and 80s. Here you find a bright and nimble expression of Cornas. There’s a purity to the layers of berry fruit and spice that really amazes. Drinking a second glass of this is really, really easy.
7) Guillaume Gilles Cornas 2019 750ml
Compare up to $130
750ml Sale Price: $89.99/btl! BUY NOW - 2 bottles available
Guillaume’s flagship Cornas comprises three separate parcels, all within the renowned vineyard of Chaillot, planted between the early-1950s and the mid-1970s: lower-lying Combe de Chaillot, with its sandier soils, offers more straightforward fruit; steep Les Terrasses, high up on the slope and poor of topsoil, contributes granitic punch and intense spiciness; and the also-terraced Grandes Mures, with its sun-soaking southward exposition, provides sumptuously dark-fruited contrabass notes and enhances the final blend’s overall structure. Guillaume vinifies and ages each parcel separately, blending them after an eighteen-month élévage in a blend of 400-liter and 600-liter oak casks of between five and fifteen years of age. This 2019 is a dense, brooding old-school powerhouse of a Cornas, with rugged structure and bottomless depth; it beckons to be cellared a bit but should unfurl slowly and majestically.
8) Guillaume Gilles Cornas 2020 750ml
Compare up to $120
750ml Sale Price: $94.99/btl! BUY NOW - 4 bottles available
Guillaume’s flagship Cornas comprises three separate parcels, all within the renowned vineyard of Chaillot, planted between the early-1950s and the mid-1970s: lower-lying Combe de Chaillot, with its sandier soils, offers more straightforward fruit; steep Les Terrasses, high up on the slope and poor of topsoil, contributes granitic punch and intense spiciness; and the also-terraced Grandes Mures, with its sun-soaking southward exposition, provides sumptuously dark-fruited contrabass notes and enhances the final blend’s overall structure. Guillaume vinifies and ages each parcel separately, blending them after an eighteen-month élévage in a blend of 400-liter and 600-liter oak casks of between five and fifteen years of age.
9) Guillaume Gilles Cornas 2021 750ml
Compare up to $130
750ml Sale Price: $99.99/btl! BUY NOW - 12 bottles available
Gilles’s flagship Cornas comprises three separate parcels, all within the renowned vineyard of Chaillot, planted between the early-1950s and the mid-1970s: lower-lying Combe de Chaillot, with its sandier soils, offers more straightforward fruit; steep Les Terrasses, high up on the slope and poor of topsoil, contributes granitic punch and intense spiciness; and the also-terraced Grandes Mures, with its sun-soaking southward exposition, provides dark-fruited bass notes and enhances the final blend’s overall structure. Guillaume vinifies and ages each parcel separately, blending them after an 18-month élevage in a blend of 400-liter and 600-liter oak casks of between five and 15 years of age. |
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