France · Rhône Valley

Auguste Clape

Auguste Clape is the patriarch of Cornas, having made wine from the appellation's granite terraces since 1955. He passed winemaking responsibilities to his son Pierre-Marie in the 1990s and then to grandson Olivier Clape in the early 2000s; the domaine remains family-owned across three generations. The wines are among the most age-worthy Syriahs produced anywhere in the Northern Rhône—fermented with full stem inclusion, aged in large old foudres with no new oak, and bottled without fining or filtration. At auction, the Cornas is the dominant wine: 334 lots at $258 average with the 2011 vintage most-traded and prices peaking at $1,315. The Renaissance is a second-tier bottling from younger vines, averaging $99 across 50 lots. The overall average of $237 per bottle across 384 lots places Clape firmly among the top-tier Northern Rhône collectibles—above most Crozes-Hermitage and Saint-Joseph but slightly below peak Hermitage. The 2010, 2011, and 2015 Cornas are widely considered the reference vintages of the last two decades for the domaine.