Winemaker Notes
This wine is opulent and generous, but always very fresh. Rochegrès is one of the best Moulin-à-Vent selections. It is complex and is therefore able to match a vast choice of food: meat, cheese, vegetables etc.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Pretty hazelnut and chocolate complexity to the ripe red and dark berry fruit. It’s rich and juicy with a medium body and a broad, ripe tannin frame. Deep and delicious.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aged in new and used barrels, the 2022 Moulin-à-Vent Clos de Rochegrès has rich aromas of tart red and black cherries, spiced plums, white acacia blossoms and sweet cedar tones. On the medium to full-bodied palate, the cherry-fruited core intermingles with flavors of candied orange peel and figs, with a trace of wet-stone salinity. It's rich but contrasted with bright acids and dainty chalky tannins that help to maintain a pliant, shapely mouthfeel.
-
Wine Spectator
Smoldering iron surrounds a center of ripe fruit and lavender paste in this slightly brawny version, with pleasing earthiness and texture. Shows real precision on the solid finish, wafting with smoke and wet leaves. Drink now through 2029. 320 cases imported.
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.