Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Chateau du Moulin-a-Vent 2011 Moulin-a-Vent Champ de Cour projects effusively fruity boysenberry and black raspberry tinged with mint, nutmeg, cinnamon and caramelized resin. Expansive and softly textured on the palate, it picks up a slightly drying spot from wood tannin in its finish, although juiciness of ripe berries still comes through in an impressively sustained finish. Where, though, are the mineral, floral or carnal dimensions one anticipates from the best of Beaujolais and indeed finds alluringly manifested in so many of this wine’s stable mates? Perhaps they are simply covered over for now – or were when I tasted in December. The theory on which the team here has proceeded – if it can take more wood, then it needs more wood – is certainly a familiar one, but I remain skeptical in practice, even if I don’t doubt that this bottling will continue projecting sweet berry fruit at least through 2016. And as for the theory that a great, ageworthy wine needs time in bottle to properly express itself, the finest and most long-lived Beaujolais of my cellaring experience were mostly also compellingly delicious as youngsters too.
Range: 89-90+ -
Wine Enthusiast
From a seven-acre parcel on the estate and produced from 35-year-old vines, this is a tannin-dominated wine. It is firm, with concentration that is just beginning to show the rich black-cherry fruits. Still developing, it needs to age, Drink from 2018.
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Wine & Spirits
This estate owns close to eight acres in Champ de Cour, with a southeastern exposure on soils that contain more clay than other areas of Moulin-a-Vent. It is an austere wine in 2011, almost somber in the context of Beaujolais. The black, mineral-inflected tannins and firm acidity lend it structure, lifting the dark spice toward complexity. For braised meats.
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.