Chateau du Moulin-a-Vent Croix des Verillats 2011
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Robert
Parker
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Wine Enthusiast
From a fine vintage, this is a rich, generous and impressive wine. It has structure, spice and a creamy texture from the 14 months in wood. Great acidity gives just the right amount of freshness to the black currant and black-cherry fruits. It's well worth aging.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The team here, expressing their satisfaction with last year’s rendition, says they did not change any significant elements of fermentation for the Chateau du Moulin-a-Vent 2011 Moulin-a-Vent Croix des Verillats, and in its elevage only the much more substantial reliance on 350-liter rather than 228-liter barrels. Tasted just ahead of its anticipated end-of-2012 bottling, this evinces cherry and black raspberry with distilled overtones; satisfyingly saline, roasted red meat and chalky undertones; brown spices and vanilla from barrel; and a fine spread of tannin that might well reflect the change made in cooperage. As it takes on air, alluring perfume of wisteria and violets rises from the glass, persisting inner-mouth. The 10,000 bottles of this long-finishing beauty should be well worth seeking out and savoring at least through 2018 (though, to be sure, it is the Chateau’s intention that these prove significantly longer-term vins de garde, and perhaps their expectations will be borne out, though I’m unprepared to predict that).
Range: 91-92
Located in the southernmost tip of the Burgundy region, Moulin-à-Vent was one of the first appellations awarded AOC status in 1936. Chateau du Moulin-à-Vent, named for the 300-year-old stone windmill atop the hill of Les Thorins, dates back to 1732, when it was called Chateau des Thorins. Today, the estate encompasses 37 hectares (91.4 acres) of the appellation’s finest climats — Les Vérillats, Le Champ de Cour, La Rochelle — planted to Gamay Noir averaging 40 years in age. The underlying granite soil is rich in iron oxide, copper and manganese, which may account for the wines’ aging potential. Since 2009, under the new ownership of the Parinet family, investment in the winemaking facilities and the vineyards has resulted in plot-specific signature wines expressing the individual characteristics of each exceptional terroir.