Domaine Coursodon

“Arriving in the village of Mauves from the south, one first passes Domaine Pierre Gonon, then Jean-Louis Chave and finally Coursodon, all within a few hundred yards of each other. It’s a stellar trio of vignerons to be sure, with Jerome Coursodon not at the same level of stardom as the others, but he’s not too far behind, either. For consumers, it’s a good opportunity to purchase some top-flight Saint-Josephs before price escalation sets in.” -Joe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate

“I’ve raved about the quality coming from this estate in the past, and the young Jerome Coursodon continues to deliver the goods in every vintage. All of his wines come from steep, east, and south-facing, granite soils located outside the village of Mauves, in the southern part of the Saint Joseph appellation.” -Jeb Dunnuck

“This 16-hectare domaine, whose holdings are centered in the highly desired granitic soils of Mauves, has a fiercely loyal European clientele that always snatches up their user-friendly but stealthily ageworthy wines as soon as they are offered, meaning that the Coursodons are often sold out of everything just a couple of months after release. These wines deserve to be better known.” -Josh Raynolds, Vinous

Jérôme Coursodon, with his father Pierre alongside, produces a stunning range of red and whites from the historic village of Mauves in the original sector of Saint-Joseph. When the Saint-Joseph appellation was established in 1956, it consisted of six communes (Mauves, Glun, Tournon, St. Jean-de-Muzols, Vion, and Lemps), all dramatically steep slopes directly across the Rhône river from Hermitage, sharing the granite soil that makes up the terroir of the western “Les Bessards” section of that famous hill.

The Coursodon family has true roots farming the granite in and around Mauves back to the mid 1800’s and Jerome’s grandfather Gustav was one of the leaders of Domaine bottling and organizing the St. Joseph appellation in the 1950’s. In 1968 the appellation expanded from the original six communes to twenty communes, stretching from Condrieu to Cornas, growing the appellation from the original 97 hectares around Mauves to its current size of 1200 hectares. The new communes did not share the steep granitic slopes that made up the original six villages, instead consisting of a variety soil types and inclines. From their prized vineyards, all on the granite slopes in and around Mauves, the Coursodons produce wines of incredible complexity, depth, minerality, and age-ability that can compete with the best from Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, and Cornas.