Fleurie "La Griffe du Marquis"

France
Beaujolais
2021

100% Gamay. Grapes from most of Roilette's oldest vines go into the "Cuvée Tardive" bottling, but a small portion of them dating back to 1930 are reserved for the smallest of all Roilette production, La Griffe du Marquis, the only barrique-aged wine from this cellar. As for the other estate vines, the soils are heavy clay with relatively little granite and quite a lot of the iron-like mineral manganese. The farming is sustainable or lutte raisonnée. All vineyard work is by hand; the soils are worked only superficially, at most twice per year, to protect the roots of the older vines.

Vinification is traditional, semi-carbonic Beaujolais style. The whole clusters are harvested by hand and fermented spontaneously with native yeasts in open-top concrete tank. Maceration lasts around 18 days for La Griffe, with a submerged cap rather than punchdowns. Sulfur use is quite minimal. The wine is aged in used barrique for a full year, so the vintage is always one behind that of all other Roilette wines. It is bottled without fining or filtration. Alain Coudert makes a point of noting that his parents were not aristocracy, but their village nicknames were "Le Marquis et La Marquise", for which this serious wine was playfully named. 

 

95 points
"The 2021 Fleurie “Griffe du Marquis” from Alain Coudert is perhaps the very finest Cru bottling from the vintage that I have yet tasted. The wine is deep, pure and very precise on both the nose and palate, with a proper chassis of tannin supporting its beautiful fruit and soil elements. It will demand some cellaring to soften up, but it is going to be a reference point for the 2021 vintage. The bouquet wafts from the glass in a complex blend of black cherries, pomegranate, gamebird, dark soil tones, brown spices, peonies, a hint of fresh thyme and a lovely framing of gently spicy oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and seamlessly balanced, with an excellent core of fruit, fine soil undertow and grip, ripe, well-integrated tannins and a long, complex and very classy finish. Like all young vintages of Griffe du Marquis, this wine needs some cellaring to soften up its undercarriage of tannin, but it is going to be a brilliant wine! 2029- 2065. "
John Gilman,
View from the Cellar
January 2024

SKU/Code: 
DB0671-21
Product Line: 
Wine
Red
Varietal: 
Gamay
Farming Type: 
Sustainable