With over 70 parcels of vines totaling seven hectares, it is no wonder that Alain Voge sometimes seems distracted. Half in jest, he says that the reason he harvests so late is to figure out which vines are his.

Lovably comic yet humble, honest, dedicated to his domaine, and incredibly hardworking, Alain Voge and his wife Elaine have been estate-bottling Cornas since the mid-1950s.

In spite of producing what most critics, Parker and the Wine Spectator included, call some of the finest wines in the world, the Voges remain the kind of people one wishes one had for grandparents.

As the fourth generation of the Voge family to make wine in Cornas, Alain inherited his domaine from his father at a time when it was hardly worthwhile to harvest the grapes.

After World War II a bushel of local peaches was worth more than a case of Cornas, so Alain supplemented his income by farming fruits and vegetables on the Rhône Valley floor. Only since the mid-1980s has Cornas been truly economic to produce, but the Voges stubbornly tended their vines through the darker days and made their superb wine regardless of its market value.

Today their seven hectares, out of a total of only 90 hectares currently under cultivation in Cornas, represents a total production of barely 2,000 cases; enough to provide a modest living for Alain and Elianne, who now farm only their vines and a small plot of Cornas’ other appellation contrôlée, petits pois (green peas) de Cornas.

Almost all of the vines at Domaine Voge are 50+ years old, meaning that virtually all of Voge’s production is labelled Vieilles Vignes. Steeply sloping like Côte Rôtie and facing south and east, the terroir of Cornas is dense granitic schist rather than mica-based as in Côte Rôtie, giving the wines a more subtle elegance in the mouth and a bit more high-toned purple fruit in flavor.