Domaine de la Pirolette Saint-Amour 2019
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Enthusiast
Wine -
Suckling
James
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Saint Amour is bounding with juicy raspberry fruit. It's full of energy with great minerality and silky tannins. Saint Amour has the most diverse geology of all of the Cru Beaujolais. Pirolette is distinct because the vineyards are near the top of the hill, where you have very little top soil and very good drainage. The vines average 65 years-old.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This rich, full-bodied wine has some serious tannins as well as generous blackberry fruits. Forty-year-old vines give concentration as well as a structure that is still young and developing. Drink from 2022.
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James Suckling
Tons of ripe blackberry and black cherry here, filling out the full, creamy body of this lavish gamay, the lively acidity and healthy tannins keeping the balance on track. Drink or hold.
Other Vintages
2020-
Suckling
James -
Enthusiast
Wine
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Suckling
James -
Enthusiast
Wine -
Parker
Robert
Delightfully playful, but also capable of impressive gravitas, Gamay is responsible for juicy, berry-packed wines. From Beaujolais, Gamay generally has three classes: Beaujolais Nouveau, a decidedly young, fruit-driven wine, Beaujolais Villages and Cru Beaujolais. The Villages and Crus are highly ranked grape growing communes whose wines are capable of improving with age whereas Nouveau, released two months after harvest, is intended for immediate consumption. Somm Secret—The ten different Crus have their own distinct personalities—Fleurie is delicate and floral, Côte de Brouilly is concentrated and elegant and Morgon is structured and age-worthy.
The bucolic region often identified as the southern part of Burgundy, Beaujolais actually doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the rest of the region in terms of climate, soil types and grape varieties. Beaujolais achieves its own identity with variations on style of one grape, Gamay.
Gamay was actually grown throughout all of Burgundy until 1395 when the Duke of Burgundy banished it south, making room for Pinot Noir to inhabit all of the “superior” hillsides of Burgundy proper. This was good news for Gamay as it produces a much better wine in the granitic soils of Beaujolais, compared with the limestone escarpments of the Côte d’Or.
Four styles of Beaujolais wines exist. The simplest, and one that has regrettably given the region a subpar reputation, is Beaujolais Nouveau. This is the Beaujolais wine that is made using carbonic maceration (a quick fermentation that results in sweet aromas) and is released on the third Thursday of November in the same year as harvest. It's meant to drink young and is flirty, fruity and fun. The rest of Beaujolais is where the serious wines are found. Aside from the wines simply labelled, Beaujolais, there are the Beaujolais-Villages wines, which must come from the hilly northern part of the region, and offer reasonable values with some gems among them. The superior sections are the cru vineyards coming from ten distinct communes: St-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Regnié, Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly. Any cru Beajolais will have its commune name prominent on the label.