Winemaker Notes
Les Vérillats has a deep red color with an intense nose of black fruit, unusual for the appellation. The mouth is full and supple, with a delicious smoothness balanced by the freshness of the fruit and spices.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
At nearly 1,000 feet, this vineyard is at the heart of Moulin-à-Vent. This wine's black fruits, ripe tannins, and spice and toast flavors from wood aging give a sense of structure and aging. The wine will be ready from 2023.
-
Wine & Spirits
This parcel is at the top of the hill, above the windmill, where a thin layer of sand covers pink granite. It’s a windy spot, where 65-year-old vines produce a gentle, gracious Moulin-à-Vent with a quiet beauty. It’s fresh, peppery and juicy, needing a year or two for the length of flavor to build complexity.
-
Wine Spectator
Elegant and enticing, with perfumed dried flowers and strawberry fruit leather backed by refreshing mineral energy. A smoked meat note weaves through the seamlessly integrated palate, with structure, ripeness and savory acidity all in perfect alignment.
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.