Domaine Michel Chignard Les Moriers Fleurie 2014
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Robert
Parker -
James
Suckling - Decanter
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Fleurie les Moriers has a wonderful, floral bouquet with wilted rose petals and violets infusing the pure red berry fruit that is well defined and gains intensity in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, good weight in the mouth and a gradual build towards the red plum and cranberry finish. Harmonious and composed from start to finish, this is a very well crafted Fleurie from the domaine.
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James Suckling
This is complex and refined with light earth, rose petals and dried fruit. Medium-bodied, fresh and crisp. Nice silky texture, too. Drink now.
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Decanter
Elegant red fruit and lifted floral nose. Silky texture. Poised and complete. Delicious.
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Enthusiast
Michel Chignard is a modest man, kind and courteous, but in every aspect of his winemaking one clearly sees a passionate perfectionist. In 2007 Michel turned the management of the family domaine over to his son Cédric, who is carrying on this philosophy with great pride and has already managed to prove himself in his first few vintages. The Chignard family is also blessed with vineyards in one of the best sites of the Fleurie appellation, Les Moriers which makes a light and playful wine, with deep, ripe fruit and finesse. They have also recently started making wine from another Beaujolais cru, Juliénas, which produces a beautiful, high-toned wine in keeping with the style of the domaine.
Delightfully playful, but also capable of impressive gravitas, Gamay is responsible for juicy, berry-packed wines. From Beaujolais, Gamay generally has three classes: Beaujolais Nouveau, a decidedly young, fruit-driven wine, Beaujolais Villages and Cru Beaujolais. The Villages and Crus are highly ranked grape growing communes whose wines are capable of improving with age whereas Nouveau, released two months after harvest, is intended for immediate consumption. Somm Secret—The ten different Crus have their own distinct personalities—Fleurie is delicate and floral, Côte de Brouilly is concentrated and elegant and Morgon is structured and age-worthy.
The bucolic region often identified as the southern part of Burgundy, Beaujolais actually doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the rest of the region in terms of climate, soil types and grape varieties. Beaujolais achieves its own identity with variations on style of one grape, Gamay.
Gamay was actually grown throughout all of Burgundy until 1395 when the Duke of Burgundy banished it south, making room for Pinot Noir to inhabit all of the “superior” hillsides of Burgundy proper. This was good news for Gamay as it produces a much better wine in the granitic soils of Beaujolais, compared with the limestone escarpments of the Côte d’Or.
Four styles of Beaujolais wines exist. The simplest, and one that has regrettably given the region a subpar reputation, is Beaujolais Nouveau. This is the Beaujolais wine that is made using carbonic maceration (a quick fermentation that results in sweet aromas) and is released on the third Thursday of November in the same year as harvest. It's meant to drink young and is flirty, fruity and fun. The rest of Beaujolais is where the serious wines are found. Aside from the wines simply labelled, Beaujolais, there are the Beaujolais-Villages wines, which must come from the hilly northern part of the region, and offer reasonable values with some gems among them. The superior sections are the cru vineyards coming from ten distinct communes: St-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Regnié, Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly. Any cru Beajolais will have its commune name prominent on the label.