2016 Franck Balthazar Cornas Chaillot
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Tasting notes
More meaty and savory than the younger vintages I tasted, Balthazar's 2016 Cornas Chaillot still shows herbal notes and red currants. Medium to full-bodied, it's firm, chewy and long. Perhaps more classic in style than the 2017 or 2018, it was harvested on September 20, more than a week later than those warmer years.
Critic scores
Josh Raynolds
Josh Raynolds
More reviews and scores
Inky ruby. Vibrant, highly perfumed blue fruit, potpourri and incense aromas display outstanding clarity and pick up exotic spice and smoky mineral notes with aeration. Pure, focused and lively in the mouth, offering appealingly sweet blueberry, cherry preserve and violet pastille flavors that show superb depth and no rough edges. Deepens slowly on the impressively long, energetic finish, which features resonating florality and sneaky, slow-mounting tannins.
Bright purple. Powerful, smoke-accented aromas of ripe dark berries, licorice, olive and incense on the deeply perfumed nose. Juicy and sharply delineated on the palate, offering concentrated, mineral-accented boysenberry, cherry liqueur and spicecake flavors that show alluring sweetness and no rough edges. In an ample but energetic style, finishing sweet and extremely long; building tannins contribute framework and youthful grip.