Winemaker Notes
Indulgent nose with Gariguette strawberry, cherry and blueberry suffused with fragrances of violet, liquorice and white pepper. Full-bodied and juicy in the mouth.
It would be the ideal red wine to celebrate a wedding as all these magic moments that makes life beautiful.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Ravishing nose of ripe mulberries, picked straight from the tree! Rich and very ripe, but there’s no hint of dried fruit and the expansive, creamy palate carries the generous alcohol very well. Very long, velvety finish. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Bright strawberry aromas mark this wine immediately. The structure of the palate is typical of the appellation, giving shape and density to this ripe, fruity wine. Drink from 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
More extravagantly fruit-driven and enveloping than its elder sibling, the 2018 Saint-Amour wafts from the glass with notions of black cherries, mulberries and licorice. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, velvety and supple, with ripe acids, melting tannins and considerable charm. While it may not make old bones, this Saint-Amour is already hard to resist.
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.