Chateau Thivin Brouilly Reverdon 2021
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Suckling
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Robert
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Beautiful cherry red color, floral, fruity bouquet, round on the palate with fresh garden fruits; underpinned by supple tannins.
A wine that can be enjoyed throughout a whole meal. It goes well well with cold cuts and white meats.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
I love the nose of sour cherries and ripe strawberries with a touch of fresh garden herbs. Only medium-bodied but with good concentration and elegant tannins, this is surprisingly long and spicy at the finish for this vintage. From vineyards on shallow granitic soil in a site with plenty of wind. Matured in concrete tanks for about eight months before bottling. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Ripe, rounded and packed with black plum fruits and soft tannins, this is a full, generous and warm wine. Aged in wood, the wine has opened up to give richness and spice. Drink this attractive wine from 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Offering up aromas of smoky berries, peonies and forest floor, the 2021 Brouilly Reverdon is medium-bodied, supple and polished, with lively acids and a seamless, nicely balanced profile.
Other Vintages
2022-
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Wine lovers who experience is limited to Noveau owe it to themselves to try the other side of Beaujolais, the hillside Beaujolais, where the soils are more granite and the terrain more rugged. The name Beaujolais may not be present of the label; instead one will find the village name, such as Brouilly, Cote de Brouilly, Morgan or Fleurie.
Chateau Thivin is located in the Cote de Brouilly, an ancient volcanic mound which juts unexpectedly from the Beaujeu Valley floor, about 30 miles north of Lyon.
In the heart of Cote de Brouilly, on the south-facing, crumbling granite slopes, Claude Geoffray at Chateau Thivin works twenty acres of vines. The vineyards are planted entirely to Gamay Noir a jus blanc, a variety of Gamay that is cultivated to stand free of wires and stakes, sturdily attached to the hillside by deep-seeking roots.
At Chateau Thivin, each section of the vineyard is harvested and fermented separately, to preserve the characteristic differences afforded by variations in exposure and altitude. The final wine is a selected blend of these cuvees. Traditional whole cluster fermentation is used in order to keep the characteristic fruity qualities of Gamay, after which the grapes are put into cuve by gravity without being crushed or destemmed. Each vintage spends a few months in large oak foudres before bottling.
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.