Maison Roche de Bellene, Chambertin Grand Cru, Burgundy
Maison Roche de Bellene, Chambertin Grand Cru, Burgundy
An introduction to Maison Roche de Bellene, Chambertin Grand Cru, Burgundy
Le Chambertin has the status of being Gevrey-Chambertin’s most prestigious and important Grand Cru, planted exclusively with Pinot Noir. Soils here are pebbly with a chalky-limestone topsoil and patches of clay, which reduces with altitude. With a network of growers across Burgundy’s best sites, Maison Roche de Bellene decide each vintage which specific parcels to use, sometimes selecting fruit from more than one. The fruit or base wine come from old-vines, planted on east facing clay-limestone soils at an elevation of 240m. Farming follows organic and sustainable principles. The Production of Maison Roche de Bellene Chambertin is often limited to less than 1,000 bottles.
Performance
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Understanding Maison Roche de Bellene, Chambertin Grand Cru, Burgundy
Made from the region’s signature Pinot Noir grape, the wine is produced from hand-harvested fruit. The cuvée uses a proportion of whole bunch during the indigenous yeast fermentation and spends up to 18 months in new oak barrels. Usually bottled filtered but unfined (vintage dependant), the wine is hugely complex and richly textural with lifted florals, savoury spice, and earthy forest floor notes. This is a wine that will be approachable after five years in bottle but will reward extended cellaring, upwards of 20 years. When reviewing the 2013, The Wine Advocate wrote that this was ‘a Chambertin determined to impress (which it certainly does!)… If you cannot afford Armand R, there is always Nicky P’. Burghound described the 2011 as ‘a fine, if not truly distinguished effort for the vintage’. According to The Wine Enthusiast, the 2019 vintage is a ‘masterful bottling…packed with pristine black-cherry and plum flavours cast against earthen, mineral complexities’.