A textbook blue stone Brouilly-style Beaujolais-Villages from one of the great women winemakers in France. Beautiful purity of Gamay Noir fruit – meets cement aging – showcasing the unique expression of Beaujolais that cannot be reproduced anywhere – but here!
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Wine Description
Reviews and Scores
90 points (2021 vintage review) -James Suckling
“Remarkably ripe and harmonious for a wine from the challenging 2021 vintage this has excellent depth and nice warm tannins. With a little aeration the red fruit and rooty characters expand nicely. The long crisp finish is the only place you feel the acidity, but it is married to a crushed rock character. Drink or hold.”
-James Suckling, published on March 20, 2023.
91+ Points, John Gilman, View From The Cellar (full review below)
“Marine Descombe’s 2018 Beaujolais-Villages is nicely svelte for the vintage, coming in at an even thirteen percent octane. The wine is made from parcels in the commune of Brouilly, with the vines averaging fifty-five years of age, but with some having been planted all the way back during World War I. Forty percent of the bunches are destemmed and the wine is fermented Burgundy style, followed by elevage in cement vats for six months. The 2018 offers up a beautifully pure and complex bouquet of sweet dark berries, cassis, a bit of smoked meats, a lovely base of granitic soil tones, cumin and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and complex, with a lovely core of black fruit, excellent soil signature and grip, a fair bit of ripe tannin and a long, structured and complex finish. This is quite serious Beaujolais Villages and could really do with another year or two in the cellar to soften up the backend tannin completely. I know that other than a couple of Beaujolais bottlings from people like Jean Paul Brun and the Chermette family, most folks are not inclined to age their Beaujolais-Villages, but Marine Descombe’s version is outstanding and very much worthy of tucking away in the cellar for a few years and let it really start to hit on all cylinders! It is very impressively complex and a fine, fine bottle in the making. 2022-2040+. 91+.”
– John Gilman, View From The Cellar, Jul-Aug 2021 #94
Vintage Notes:
2020: A very sunny vintage with little precipitation and strong heatwaves throughout the season. For Beaujolais Villages, harvest was very early, starting August 22: very good maturity but a fairly moderate yield at 33 hl/ha. The vintage offers deeply concentrated wines with black fruit aromas, and beautiful substance on the palate, with melted tannins and long finish. A vintage with great aging potential.
AOP Beaujolais-Villages
AOP Beaujolais-Villages: Beaujolais-Villages is produced in part of the Beaujolais vineyard. It’s the first appellation in France to use the term “villages.” In 38 municipalities of the Rhône and Saône-et-Loire, and 3 geographical zones with marked specificities, these fruity and fleshy wines reflect the characteristics of their terroirs. The vines are often planted at altitude and on hillsides. These delectable red wines mark a kind of transition between Beaujolais, in the south, and the ten crus further north.
Soils: light, acidic, granite and sandy soils, composed of much sand and a little clay.
Climate: temperate with favorable sunshine, but with strong variations due to conflicts between oceanic, continental and Mediterranean influences.
Winemaking : Manual harvest with a strict selection. Partial destemming (40%). Burgundy-style vinification. Vatting: 10 days. Grapes are pressed softly and slowly. Fermentation: 1 month. Aging in tanks: 6 months.
Varietal : 100% Gamay
Surface: 11.07 ha
Yield:58 hl/ha
Number of plots: 12
Production: 85 600 btls
Age of vines: 55 years
Bottle size : 75 and 150 cl
Pruning type: Gobelet
Marine is the 5th generation of Descombe. She worked for her father and took over as the Chef when she was well under 30.
