SOUILLARD CORNAS SAINT-PIERRE 2019

Dark plum, crushed black olive, and smoked meat open the glass, with an iron-edged minerality and firm, fine-grained tannins carrying through to a long finish. That mineral drive comes directly from Saint-Pierre's south-facing granite soils — gravelly-sandy over bedrock, water-poor, and high enough in elevation that harvest runs later than most of Cornas. The vines, planted in the early 1970s and 2000s, are farmed under lutte raisonnée. Indigenous yeast fermentation with pump-overs feeds into 20 months in older oak barrels, keeping the fruit honest and the structure intact.