2013 Auguste Clape Syrah

RP95 Probably the wine of the vintage is Clape’s 2013 Cornas. Coming from some of the prime terroirs in this incredible appellation, it’s always 100% Syrah (Cornas is always 100% Syrah) that saw no destemming and spent 22 months in mostly ancient foudre. This wine offers up classic Clape notes of beef blood, cold steel, liquid rock, pepper and saddle leather (there’s fruit in there as well) to go with a medium to full-bodied, beautifully concentrated, rich, textured 2013 that has an awesome mid-palate, ripe tannin and clean, lengthy finish. It won’t be as long lived as some of the more blockbuster-styled years, but it will dish out incredible pleasure over the coming 10-15 years.

Sitting at the top of the Cornas hierarchy, Domaine Clape is run with incredible passion and talent by Pierre-Marie Clape, who’s getting more and more assistance from his son, Oliver. Year in, year out, they fashion one of the most concentrated, structured and age-worthy wines of the appellation, and this is certainly true in 2013 as well. When speaking about the 2013 vintage, Pierre-Marie commented on the rusticity in the tannin, as well as higher acidity. He went on to say that it’s a vintage that will require cellaring. While I didn’t find any rusticity in the 2013s, I certainly agree that they’ll need short term cellaring. I was also able to taste through numerous barrels of the 2014, and this looks to be a good, maybe not great vintage, with the wines showing less concentration and depth than the 2013s. I’ll review these next year.