There’s no record of whether Yves Cuilleron is a fan of Kansas, but in the 1980s he was a bit of a wayward son. Yves’ grandfather Claude had founded the domaine in 1920, and by 1987 Yves’ uncle Antoine was retiring with no heirs interested in making wine. Meanwhile Yves was pursuing a career as a mechanic. He caught the wine bug just in time, the family did not sell, and Yves proceeded to become one of the best winemakers in the Rhone Valley, famous for his obsessive viticultural and winemaking practices – not explicitly organic or natural, but detailed and different for every one of the dozens of wines he makes. This Cuvée comes from Syrah vineyards at high elevation in the countryside surrounding famous villages at the heart of the northern Rhone. All Cuilleron grapes are hand harvested, and work in the cellar is largely done by hand too before the wine was exposed to a judicious degree of older oak. The wine shows a nose of smoked pork belly, blackcurrant, wild blueberry, black pepper, sage and rosemary. Syrah’s soulful fruit comes out on the palate, deep black raspberry and blackberries, pipe smoke and leather and gravelly brown soil that drive all the way through the finish, carried on a bed of elegant tannins. Both gulpable and ageable, this is a wine for cold nights featuring hearty potatoes, pizza, or pork loin.