Walls: A vertical of a great Cornas cuvée

A tasting note is a written record of an encounter with a wine. Sometimes the meeting is brief; you shake hands and move on.

But occasionally you become embroiled. Words spread across the page and spill down it, there is so much to say. Even before you’ve had time to draw any conclusions, you know you’re in the presence of something special.

Vincent Paris’ La Geynale from the hillside of Cornas, is reliably one such wine.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for Vincent Paris’ La Geynale

When young, it’s a roaring black hole, massive, dense, drawing you in. A wine so assertive it seems to taste you as much as you taste it.

I visited Vincent Paris one grey spring morning to taste nine early vintages to see how they are developing – and whether any vintages of this famously long-lived wine are ready to drink yet.

A Cornas grand cru

Like dogs and their owners, sometimes wines embody the winemaker. But not here. Paris cuts a lean figure, he’s reserved, and doesn’t waste words.

He doesn’t seek the limelight – he’s happy to let the place do the talking. And what a place it is.

The granite slopes of the Northern Rhône can be steep and jagged, but Cornas is particularly chaotic.

Though the heart of the appellation is essentially east-facing, thanks to the streams that cut down from the plateau above, there are some south-facing vineyards.

Reynard – the greatest lieu-dit of them all – is one of them. Paris says La Geynale isn’t technically a lieu-dit itself – it’s just the name given to the eastern flank of Reynard.

‘It’s the hottest terroir in Cornas,’ says Paris, and very dry with it. His cuvée La Geynale comes principally from a 1ha parcel from this side of the hill, hence the name – but it also contains 0.3ha of Reynard.

Generational transition

When Paris’ great-grandfather replanted the site in 1910 after phylloxera, he included a few white vines.

But when the appellation was officially ratified in 1938, it was agreed that Cornas must be 100% Syrah.

‘You still find a few white grapes to eat during harvest,’ notes Paris.

It was his uncle, the great Robert Michel, who tended the site for 40 years before Paris. Michel trained some of Cornas leading winemakers, including Guillaume Gilles, Thierry Allemand, and Paris himself.

Paris’ parents weren’t winemakers, so establishing his own estate was a struggle. Thankfully his grandfather bequeathed him a hectare of Cornas vines in 1997, which gave him a crucial foothold.

After Michel’s last vintage in 2006, he decided to sell his vineyards, and he gave Paris first refusal on his parcel of La Geynale. Naturally Paris was keen – but the price of land had risen to €500,000 per hectare.

‘The bank said no to begin with,’ says Paris, so he reached out to investors – mostly other wine professionals. Having successfully reached his target, his first vintage of La Geynale was 2007.

Sticking to tradition

Paris says he’s tasted 30-year-old bottles of Michel’s La Geynale that were still in great shape, and this has convinced him to keep to similar methods.

‘I wanted to keep my uncle’s ways, so it’s still whole bunch,’ he says. ‘With climate change it’s much better, because when you ferment with the stalks it reduces alcohol by around 0.5%. And the vegetal side brings freshness and a menthol note.’

He continues to use indigenous yeasts, ferments in concrete tanks, and matures the wines in three to eight-year-old barriques and demi-muids for a year or more.

He makes two other Cornas cuvées – Granit 30 and Granit 60, the numbers referring to the steepness of the slopes where the grapes are grown.

But La Geynale is his top cuvée, amounting to just 5,000 bottles a year on average.

The tasting

Paris generously opened bottles of all the vintages of La Geynale he had in his cellar – there was no more stock of the earlier-drinking 2008, 2014 and 2016.

Despite their concentration and intensity, three of them are already good to go – including the oldest (2007) and – more surprisingly – the youngest (2018).

He didn’t add any sulfites in 2007 and 2008, and the 2007 certainly stands out for its wild side.

The bottle we tasted was a touch volatile and had an animal aroma that later vintages didn’t share. It also had more marked acidity and drier tannins, which is likely down to the vintage.

It nonetheless offered complexity and enjoyment, but the 2009 and 2010 were a big step up, even if neither were ready to drink.

These are both great vintages in Cornas, and the 2010 in particular is a phenomenal wine. It displayed the classic markers of the greatest Cornas: aromatically, it brimmed with smoke, slate and menthol.

Texturally it was bristling with the angular, pointed tannins that make Cornas such a physical experience.

One of the great cuvées

Another great vintage was 2015, which will be no great shock – an exceptional vintage in the Northern Rhône.

What might be more surprising is the quality of the 2013 – not usually considered a brilliant vintage, but Paris made an involving wine with freshness and finesse.

Cornas usually takes many years for its tannins to soften, but the exception is 2018 – these are delicious young, even from traditional estates such as Paris and Clape.

A couple of vintages (2011, 2017) showed a gamey side that some wine lovers might find off-putting, but in neither case did it dominate the wine.

But for this reason, I would consider drinking these two sooner rather than later.

This tasting confirmed what I’ve long felt about Vincent Paris’ La Geynale: it is one of the great Cornas cuvées, classically styled, with awesome longevity in good vintages.

And while some other estates’ top wines have become stratospherically expensive, La Geynale remains relatively affordable.

It reminded me that a great wine can tell you a lot – about a place, its history, a family, tradition, ideas of beauty and the passing of time. It’s the kind of encounter you don’t forget in a hurry.

Vincent Paris, Cornas, La Geynale vertical

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