2005 Domaine Thierry Allemand Cornas Reynard
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Tasting notes
Mature but in the middle of its prime drinking window, the 2005 Cornas Reynard from Allemand shows the inherent elegance and purity of this address and has a great bouquet of ripe plums, iron, spring flowers, bacon fat, and hints of leather that develop nicely with time in the glass. Medium to full-bodied on the palate, it has the vintage’s more focused, firm, borderline austere style yet has solid mid-palate depth, beautiful overall balance, and a great finish. This classic, complex Cornas will continue drinking well for another decade and, I suspect, have a gradual decline after that.
Critic scores
Jeb Dunnuck
Josh Raynolds
More reviews and scores
(this is essentially the Chaillot with the addition of old-vines Reynard) Opaque purple. Explosive, room-filling bouquet of ripe blue and black fruits, fresh flowers, Asian spices and smoky minerals. Deep, sweet and velvety, with bracing cassis and boysenberry flavors, amazing mineral lift and hefty but fine-grained tannins. Extremely impressive and built to repay extended cellaring. (Allemand's 2006s were scheduled to be bottled in early December, two weeks after my visit. I tasted three stunning lots, with the Reynard especially palate-staining, but Allemand had not yet decided how he could combine these three components into two bottlings.)
Inky purple. Pungent, licorice-accented blackberry and plum aromas, with a strong note of smoked meat. Very rich and ripe, with powerful, exceptionally deep dark fruit flavors and solid, brawny tannins. This should be one serious blockbuster.
About the producer
Allemand’s wines set the benchmark for Cornas: expressive Syrahs crafted with uncompromising traditional methods and released in tiny quantities. From the 1980s, he revived abandoned vineyards on Cornas’s steep granite slopes, building his domaine without inherited land or financial support.