2010 Moulin a Vent La Rochelle, Ch des Jacques

Dedicated to a parcel in sandy degraded as well as firm mother-rock granite between Clos du Grand Carquelin, and Clos de Rochegres that they acquired only shortly before harvest, Chateau des Jacques’s 2010 Moulin-a-Vent La Rochelle mingles game, forest floor and ripe purple plum in a manner suggesting – but not at all disappointingly – a more developed cru Beaujolais than one from this vintage. There is slight graininess of tannin but also juicy persistence allied to admirable meaty, saline savor that leaves my mouth watering for the next sip. Plan to enjoy this through 2014. While wine guru Jacques Lardiere has retired after more than four decades as Jadot’s technical director, his choice as hands-on director of Chateau des Jacques when Jadot purchased it in 2000, Guillaume de Castelnau, remains in charge there. (You can read more about their aspirations and methods for Beaujolais in my Issue 184, 190, and 196 reports.) That the team here considers the 2011 harvest – which began on August 27 but had already concluded on September 9 – a rousing success will come as no surprise just from scanning my scores. Only two wines in the eventual collection even came near to reaching 13.5% alcohol, yet all are richly fruited and generously mouth-filling, and most of them already texturally alluring as well, even given 20-30 days of fermentative extraction (via both punch-downs and pump-overs in a regimen adapted to each site). I’ll let the estate’s two bottlings that debuted this vintage – plus one inaugurated in 2010 – introduce themselves by way of the relevant tasting notes, but readers should note that the absence of reviews for 2011 vintage wines from Champs de Cour, Clos des Thorins, or (in Morgon) Roche Noire reflects a decision by the domaine to eliminate separate bottlings from those sites, whose fruit will instead entirely inform – and, no doubt, enrich – the relevant generic bottlings. (De Castelnau did hold open the option of an occasional special, perhaps market- or even client-dedicated bottling from one or more of these sites.) With the exception of one Morgon cuvee still in cask when I tasted it last December, all of the 2011 reds from Chateau des Jacques were bottled in late July and early August of last year. In keeping with a convention noted in the introduction to this report, I have also published here new notes on single-site Chateau des Jacques 2010s to the extent (often considerable, and then always positively!) that they performed outside the bounds of the (two-point spread) projections that accompanied my tasting notes on them from barrel or tank in Issue 196. I have appended to my note on the corresponding 2011, or most nearly related 2010, brief parenthetic comments on the recent bottle performances of any 2010 if its rating fell within my Issue 196 projection. Imported by Kobrand, Inc., New York, NY; tel. (212) 490 9300