Tasted in Odenas with Jean-Baptiste Bachevillier, 21 February 2017.
Château de Pierreux
Lieu-dit Pierreux
69460 Odenas
Jean-Baptiste is responsible for vinification at Pierreux, his first vintage was 2015, he is also Boisset’s ‘Ambassador for Beaujolais.‘
Jean-Baptiste explains “Currently the domaine has 103 hectares, 3 being white – 2016 will be the first white vintage. There are almost 100 tanks, in cement, and lines of 50 hectolitre foudres in the cellar.
“The domaine still has 5 metayeurs, it was 10. As the metayeurs retire the domaine retakes the vines and then buys a new foudre! The wine stays 5-7 months in those foudres before passing through barrels to bring the total time of elevage to 13-14 months. We have also just started 4 hectraes of vines in biodynamie as a test.”
The wines…
Really don’t ignore wines from négoce such as Trenel or Mommessin! A great range – amazingly the base domaine wine from Pierreux is cheaper than the Mommessin Grands Mises Brouilly!
2015 Mommessin Renovatio (Rosé) Côteaux Bourguignons
From south of Beaujolais, a rosé de presse.
A little width of aroma, seemingly softly textured. Surprisingly effusive, sweet and energetic. A decent mouth-watering wine. Not your typical gamay rosé as it’s more overtly fruity. Quite tasty in a very fruity style.
A single vigneron and with elevage in barrel
A little deeper colour. This is higher toned, more herbal. Much fresher, wider, a growing intensity. Much more interesting wine – sweet but with line and complexity. Really a delicious thing…
2015 Mommessin Grands Mises Beaujolais Villages
75% destemmed and a maceration of 20 days. Parcel selection
Deep colour and a deep nose to match – sweetly concentrated. Fresh, direct, actually a very good line and length of flavour too. Fresh, floral perfumed, dark red fruit. This is very tasty, almost too floral, but I like the shape very much.
2015 Mommessin Grands Mises – Fleurie
From la Prele – east facing hillside vines
Also a floral nose but in a more sweetly attractive style. This is much, much wider in the mouth, sweetly floral again, but much more attractively so. Delicious wine. And with great length…
Again, deeply coloured, 50% destemmed, 15-16 days of maceration. South-east facing in the area of Bellevue. Early maturing
More depth of aroma, subtly floral, this is really, really attractive. Good line, a little more directly structured than the last, layers of flavour, and a base of fine tannin. Delicious again, but requiring just a little more cellar time. Excellent!
2015 Mommessin Grands Mises, Morgon Grand Cras
Really a deep colour. Tight but deep, faintly spiced above. More direct, muscular, intense wine. Really a Corton style. Linear wine, modestly accented with tannin. Long and narrow. Good wine!
2015 Mommessin Grands Mises, Morgon Les Charmes
‘A vast terroir, so a mix of schist and granite’ – 100% destemmed, 3-6 year-old barrel elevage for about 12 months
Really very much more open and very much more floral – nice! Like the last this is a sleek and direct wine. Really a very fine texture, though here with a little distracting oak flavour – today. A pretty finishing bitterness to make it not too easy. Super wine.
A little newer oak if not actually new.
Still deeply coloured. A rounder nose, some flowers and a depth of fruit but more rounded by oak notes. An extra sweetness to the much more mouth-watering, fresher fruit. Really direct and energetic, much harder to spot the oak flavour – this is a baby, but and great one – bravo. Wait at least 5 years – better 10+ Super length of finish…
Part destemming, cuvaison a little longer than traditional for Beaujolais.”
Deep colour, just barely transparent. Profound depth, more instantly open and inviting than the previous wines of Morgon. Volume in the mouth, mouth-watering, a freshness of melting fruit flavour, plenty of fine tannin that frames all those flavours. Oof – great stuff!
2015 Mommessin Grands Mises Julienas
A nice nose, not the biggest, not the smallest. Really quite some volume here, and a more overt structure too – yet with layers of flavour behind. Faintly floral against the not quite stark, but certainly direct fruit. A little more tannin in the finish – a fresh finish, faintly lingering… To wait for, but with interest!
2015 Chateau Pierreux, Brouilly
More than 80% destemmed with 6 months in foudre.
Deep colour but still transparent. Ooh – that’s a beautiful top to bottom nose – really gorgeously presented with faint but attractive floral top notes. Plenty of volume, a halo of micro-grained tannin. Intense, with a good line of flavour. Quite fresh. And slowly melting too. This is really, really tasty. Dark flavoured and mouth-watering in the finish. Yum!
Bordeaux bottle. 100 year-old vines, of typically 20 hl/ha
Super dense colour. A fresh, really deep nose – direct, no padding. In the mouth too this is concentrated but intense wine – more compact and concentrated today, but with time I expect this will slowly open its limbs and become more expressive. The flavour is fine the energy relatively modest vs what’s gone before, but here’s a different level of concentration and indeed tannin too. Be patient, this could be brilliant.
Really not much deeper colour than the Beaujolais wines.
Ooh this is rather more floral and less spicy than I expected – really its a very inviting, deep, faintly sweet nose. Clearly the flavour profile is different in the mouth – lots of dimension, almost a hint of chocolate and flowers in the middle. This is really delicious wine – I might guess that it’s from Argentina or somewhere, blind, but it’s clearly totally delicious.