Thierry Allemand built his domaine from nothing. A former electromechanical engineer, he arrived in Cornas in the early 1980s with no family vines and no inheritance, learning by working alongside Robert Michel by day and helping the ageing Noël Verset by night. Verset, with no heir of his own, eventually sold Allemand parcels of his ancient vines in Reynard, a gesture that would come to define the domaine. Plot by plot, terrace by terrace, Allemand cleared and replanted the abandoned, near-vertical hillsides that most of Cornas had written off, restoring roughly five hectares of vine across two of the appellation's great terroirs: Chaillot and Reynard. Today his son Théo works alongside him, having taken on leadership of the domaine in 2021 while holding to his father's methods without compromise. Farmed by hand on slopes too steep for a tractor and treated with nothing beyond sulphur and copper, Allemand's Cornas has earned a reputation among sommeliers, critics and fellow winemakers as some of the purest, most precise Syrah the appellation produces. Production remains minute.

2023 was not an easy year to farm. A dry winter left the appellation short on water reserves, then an early, intense spring brought significant mildew pressure, hitting organic-leaning growers hardest. Cornas took a hailstorm on 12th July, followed by a 40-degree heatwave through most of August that pulled yields down further. A storm in mid-September forced early picking decisions across the appellation, and growers who brought fruit in ahead of the rain generally fared best. The resulting wines are lower in yield but true to Cornas's granite character: firm, concentrated and built with the structure to age, rather than the broad, blockbuster style of some recent vintages.