Matthieu Barret

Matthieu Barret has been making wine at Cornas since 1998, at Domaine du Coulet. Cornas is the smallest of the Northern Rhône's serious red appellations, a steep amphitheatre of granite terraces behind the town, planted entirely to Syrah, and for most of the twentieth century it was overlooked in favour of Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie. It is not overlooked now, and Barret is one of the reasons for that.

The domaine covers twenty hectares on granite hillsides, farmed organically and biodynamically. Ploughing on the steep parcels is done by mule and horse, partly because a tractor cannot work ground like that and partly because Barret does not want the soil compacted. Yields are deliberately low, twenty to thirty hectolitres per hectare, which is roughly half what the appellation allows.

In the cellar he has gone further than most. Grapes are destemmed and fermented in concrete or stainless vats of no more than twenty hectolitres, with no temperature control at all, on the argument that intervening flattens the aromatics. Nothing is added during vinification; the only input in the whole process is a small amount of sulphur at bottling. And since 2017 he has stopped using oak barrels altogether, ageing everything in ovoid concrete tanks and terracotta jars instead, so that what you taste is the fruit and the granite rather than the container.

That last decision is genuinely uncommon at this level and it is the single most useful thing to know about these wines. Cornas has a reputation for being dense, tarry and slow to come round, and a good deal of that reputation came from new oak. Barret is deliberately making the opposite kind of Cornas.

He also bottles a second range under his own name, Matthieu Barret, with labels like Black Flag and Vivre Libre ou Mourir, alongside the Domaine du Coulet Cornas cuvées: Brise Cailloux, Billes Noires and Géniale Patronne.

Two wines cover the ground between them. No Wine's Land is his Côtes du Rhône, and the name is a joke about geography: the vines sit on a plateau in the gap between the Cornas and Saint-Joseph appellations, so fruit from a very good address has to be bottled under the generic name. It is the affordable way to taste what he does. Brise Cailloux is his principal Cornas, and everything from the 2017 vintage on was made after he gave up oak.

Two things worth saying. First, this is not a producer for anyone who wants a plush, oaky Syrah. The whole point is the opposite, and if that is what you are after there are better ways to spend the money. Second, the Cornas is a large commitment for a wine that is hard to come by, so if you want to try the style before spending that, the Côtes du Rhône is the place to start.