By Bob Tyrer in The Sunday Times, August 2009
Georges Vernay is another of the great names of French wine. Collines Rhodaniennes, cépage Syrah 2007, is one of the most explosive wines I've tasted. Here are my initial notes: "Smoke, dust, cheese, dark berries, dark old rooms in Spitalfields (!), iron, steak, very bloody, a wild animal, is this unicorn's blood?" The following evening, it had settled to: "Roses, violets, chocolate, mulberries but still very funky." Buy some, open a bottle to marvel at the volcanic eruption, and put the rest away for a couple of years to await developments. Some purists will dismiss it as 'rustic' but who cares?