Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This comes from a single vineyard facing southeast across the Saône Valley. Ripe tannins and great concentration are balanced by opulent, spicy fruit and wonderful richness. The wine is just approaching maturity and will benefit from further aging. Drink from 2021.
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James Suckling
Intense aromas of blackberries, orange peel, and tile with hints of white peppers, all of which follows through to a medium body. Firm, silky tannins and a powerful finish. Shows structure and depth. Drink now or in two or three years. One to keep in the cellar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Moulin A Vent la Rochelle comes from 85-year-old vines that were cropped at just 20 hectoliters per hectare, and 65% is aged in 50% new oak (Alliers and Vosges) for 12 months. It has a complex bouquet—a mixture of red and black fruit, hints of cold stone and violet. The palate is well balanced with supple redcurrant, cranberry and hoisin notes, fanning out with a structured, salted licorice-tinged finish that leaves the mouth tingling. It is a lovely wine, even if I might just err towards the elegance of the Champ de Cour this year.
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.