92-94 points Vinous Media
Drinking window: 2028 - 2040
Youthful purple. A highly perfumed bouquet evokes fresh black and blue fruits, star anise, olive, violet and tobacco. A smoky mineral accent builds steadily in the glass and energizes the spice-laced, dark berry liqueur, smoky bacon and floral pastille flavors that are underscored by a vein of juicy acidity. Clings with strong tenacity on the youthfully tannic finish, leaving behind sappy blue fruit, cracked pepper and mineral notes.

Domaine Lionnet delivers highly expressive, unadorned and elegant wines that greatly please old-school purists. With only 2.2 hectares in Cornas and another 1.8 in Saint-Joseph, these wines have never been easy to find, and increasing attention from the market has not made things any easier. Corinne Lionnet, her husband, Ludovic Izerable, who makes the wines, and now their son, Luca, work in a strictly hands-off fashion. The wines are made with whole clusters and native yeast raised in large oak barrels, almost none of them new and, recently, some amphoras, with which they are quite pleased. Today, I would count this domaine’s wines among the best from Cornas. - Josh Raynolds Dec 22