Maison Roche de Bellene Champeaux, Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru, France

羅斯德貝香珀園干紅葡萄酒

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The 2017 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Champeaux is a polished, expressive wine, bursting with aromas of sweet berry fruit, plums and spices, framed by a deft application of creamy new oak. Medium to full-bodied, supple and fleshy, it's succulent and open-knit, with melting tannins and an exuberant core of fruit. This is already drinking well.

The 2016 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Champeaux includes 100% whole bunch and new oak. Now this seems to handle the new wood better than the Lavaux Saint-Jacques at the moment and reveals attractive blackcurrant and raspberry preserve aromas underneath, plus a whiff of old boot polish. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannin, slightly lower acidity than I was anticipating and the new oak smooths out the finish, rending it a little generic. Let's see once in bottle.

The 2012 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Champeaux has a refined elegant and quite floral bouquet. The palate is medium-bodied with silky smooth tannins that are perhaps even finer than the Combe Aux Moines, though it just dips at the finish. Still, this is a lovely Gevrey even if I would err in favor of the Combe Aux Moines. Burgundy needs personalities and they do not come much bigger than Nicolas Potel. He’s been on the scene ever since I remember him attending some of the London primeur tastings back in the late 1990s. His path to success has never been straightforward: working his way around Australia and California, starting a small negoce a year before the untimely passing of his father and the sale of the Pousse d’Or estate; the sudden explosion of cuvees under his Maison Nicolas Potel label that ultimately led to liquidity problems and the sale to Cottin Freres; the debacle of then being fired from the brand that bore his own name in 2009 and finally, the creation of Domaine de Bellene from his base in Beaune. The maison was amid renovation when I called in on a freezing Thursday evening for a comprehensive tasting of both domaine and negociant wines. Fortunately, there are no longer the 100+ crus of Maison Nicolas Potel back in the 1990s, but through his numerous friends and contacts, Nicolas has still managed to accumulate a considerable portfolio that includes a number of grand crus. And he knows that with such a diverse array of wines, it is vital to keep an eye on standards. To this end, he has adopted organic viticulture in his vineyards, prudently using whole cluster ferments and monitoring the use of new oak so that it is commensurate with the fruit concentration, in particular through his judicious use of larger 600-litre barrels. I guess in some ways you can draw parallels with the Remoissenet operation nearby: focusing on quality at various price points across a broad range of appellations and crus. Nicolas himself is and always has been quite a character. I can imagine when he was younger and working in Australia he had no problem keeping up with the obligatory beer consumption. He is always candid about the goings on in Burgundy, and I sensed that he acknowledges the importance of building Domaine de Bellene and Maison Roche de Bellene into long-term, stable and viable brands after the trials of the past. In this respect he is doing a great job, because these were mainly excellent wines. Not every single wine was without fault, but as a range of wines and given the reasonable prices asked, one can have few complaints. Echoing the sentiments at Remoissennet, there is a burgeoning need for such wines. Not everyone can afford Roumier or DRC. Importer: Loosen Bros., www.loosenbrosusa.com and available through most UK merchants (see http://www.domainedebellene.com/distributeurs-bellene-uk.html for full list.)

The Bellene 2008 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Champeaux leads with violet and peony perfume, cooked cherry, and cocoa powder; displays considerable sweetness but also overt flavors of oak (one of its two barrels was new) and slightly abrasive tannins; and finishes with sweetness yet some gum-numbing. Here though I am tempted to believe that more finesse and florality might follow once the wine has been in bottle for a few months, and I would meantime defer any prognosis of age-ability. Operating with a crew of more than a dozen from the same imposing facility as his domaine (for more about which, consult under -Domaine de Bellene-) Nicolas Potel is assembling contracts (favoring organic and moreover biodynamic growers) to support an array of negociant wines in red and (around one-third) white nearly as vast and as studded with illustrious crus as was that associated with Maison Nicolas Potel (which became a subsidiary of Laboure-Roi in 2003, and from which Potel has been estranged since last year). I find the ambitious scope of this project - encompassing the sophisticated remodeling of an ancient Cistercian press house - even more impressive than I do its two initial collections of wines, but then, the exceptional, often very tiny lots of young wine or fruit that informed the best lots from Maison Nicolas Potel and the degree of control that could be exercised over them are not things one would expect anyone to replicate in two years, not to mention years of meteorological challenge as well.. (All Roche de Bellene contracts so far have been for must or young wine, not fruit.) Since most of the 2008 collection had only just been bottled when I tasted it in March, allowances should be made for the possibility that many wines were suffering from this - I could almost have added a "+?" after each entry - which time did not permit me to re-taste. (And for all of the wines I tasted, and report on below, these do not represent the entire 2008 Roche de Bellene collection, as Potel did not assemble samples for me of a number of wines that were still in barrel at the time of my visit, nor, regrettably, could I have found time to taste them all since I had not anticipated such a vast collection.) No U.S. importer has yet been named for these wines.