Franck Balthazar, Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge 2024

Profile & Story

Franck Balthazar took over his small family domaine in Cornas in 2002 and, in the words of his US importer Polaner Selections, established it within a decade as home to perhaps the most expressive and rigorously traditional wines in the northern Rhone - hand and horse plowing, whole-cluster native-yeast fermentation and ageing in neutral 600-litre barrels. This Cotes-du-Rhone is made with a grower friend in Seguret from organically grown fruit, predominantly syrah rounded out with grenache, harvested by hand, vinified in whole bunches with indigenous yeasts and bottled without filtration.