Today, there is no more unique figure in the Northern Rhône than Cornas’ Thiérry Allemand. Though only in his 50s, he has been mythologized in much the same way as past greats like Noël Verset, Marius Gentaz and August Clape. He created his domaine from scratch, inheriting nothing from his ancestors. And because he also didn’t have a family fortune behind him, much of his domaine was assembled by laboriously restoring abandoned parcels in great terroirs.

While deeply rooted in the past, Thiérry’s approach to winemaking is uniquely his. He began in the early 1980s by learning at the knees of two Cornas legends, Joseph Michel and Noël Verset, but has gone on to apply a quarter century of personal experience. He has arrived, finally, at a philosophy that, while squarely in the traditional camp, produces wine whose purity and expression of grape variety and place are unrivalled by anyone in Cornas.