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Domain: Noël Verset

Noël Verset started making wine alongside his father in 1931 when he was 12 years old. He established his own business in 1943, and retired with the 2000 vintage. He sold off his vineyard plots individually, and only to winemakers he respected such as Thierry Allemand, and also transferred parcels to Domaine Clape and Domaine Courbis, and his nephew, Franck Balthazar. He continued making wine, for personal consumption and for his family until 2006 (when he was 87), and also supplied the Rhone's “artisan” négociant Tardieu-Laurent. Noël Verset was one of the appellation's iconic personalities. He was the first winegrower in Cornas to achieve international acclaim and a gifted winemaker who gave his wines a unique style, a style that was known to balance any potential excess in a given vintage. He only ever produced one cuvée, assembled from all his terroirs, which explains the perfect balance in his wines. His winemaking practices were resolutely traditional: low yields, harvesting grapes at full maturity, whole bunches, treading by foot, fermentation in cement vats and 15 months of ageing in old demi-muid barrels. Like Marius Genatz in the Côte-Rôtie and Ernest Trollat in Saint-Joseph, Noël Verset was one of those eminent traditional winemakers who shaped the legend of their appellations.