Winemaker Notes
This vibrant Gamay features hues of garnet and crimson color. This Moulin à Vent impresses with its full-bodied notes of dark berries and spices, combined with its roasted aromas. The oak adds delicate grilled notes to this wine. It is full-bodied and rich on the palate with great volume and opulence. Surprising nuances of Havana cigar and a subtle peppery aftertaste arouse curiosity.
It goes wonderfully with red meats, roasted chicken or salmon.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Notes of bitter chocolate at play with cherry and blackberry fruit. Some cloves and sweet spices. It’s deep and polished with a full body and long, spicy layers. Ripe and integrated tannins. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Moulin-à-Ventis a top Beaujolais Cru for a reason, and it's because of bottles like this one. The wine has an earthy nose filled with red raspberry, forest floor, cedar mulch, black cherry and violet blossom. The wine is fulsome with a streak of acidity that enlivens the midpalate and completes with shaved-granite dust.
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.