Château du Moulin-à-Vent, Moulin-à-Vent `La Rochelle`

The history of Château du Moulin-à-Vent dates back to 1732, when it was previously known as Château des Thorins. Both the Château and the Beaujolais Cru take their name from the area’s emblematic windmill, built in 1550 and still standing today. In 2009, Jean-Jacques Parinet and his son Edouard purchased the estate. They have spent the last 15 years transforming the approach in both the vineyards and the winery. Their pioneering spirit, investment and hard work have re-established Château du Moulin-à-Vent as the benchmark for this top Beaujolais Cru.

All of the Château du Moulin-à-Vent wines are made from 100% estate-grown Gamay. Their farming approach is focused on sustainable viticulture, embracing organic and biodynamic practices in the vineyards and the wines will be officially certified organic from the 2024 vintage. Château du Moulin-à-Vent’s vines are, on average, 65 years old, planted on 220-million-year-old eroded pink granite soils with seams of manganese, silica, quartz, iron oxide and clay woven through in certain sites. These gobelet vines are trained ‘en éventail’, allowing trellising and better canopy management, while simultaneously making it easier to work the soils. Constant winds during harvest (no surprise given the vineyards’ proximity to the famed windmill), help retain acidity and freshness in the final wines. Each vineyard is planted at approximately 10,000 vines per hectare, resulting in low yields of between 20 to 35 hectolitres per hectare. This starkly contrasts the official minimum requirements of the Moulin-à-Vent appellation: 6,000 vines per hectare and yields of 56 hectolitres per hectare.

The result of this careful vineyard management is remarkable concentration in the Château du Moulin-à-Vent grapes.Combined with very gentle vinification, the wines gain finesse and power, endowing them with great potential to age. The winemaking philosophy is simple: soft and slow. This is how technical director Brice Laffond and Edouard believe the maximum potential is extracted from the Gamay. There is no set recipe at Château du Moulin-à-Vent: winemaking is adapted to the specifics of each vintage and site, by varying the percentage of whole-bunch used in the fermentation and the length of maceration on the skins. Similarly, ageing in French oak barrels (carried out for around 30% of the estate’s total production) is tailored to each individual wine. Brice and Edouard have reined in their use of new oak in recent years, to allow the purity of fruit and sense of place of the vineyards to shine through. The château now has a collection of over 100 barrels, on average on their 6th use, housed in its 16th century vaulted cellar dug into the granite rock below.

The Moulin-à-Vent is a blend of three sites, ‘Moulin-à-Vent’, ‘La Roche’ and ‘Les Thorins’. The Château has gradually reduced its use of new oak in recent years, allowing the purity of fruit to shine through. As a result, the Moulin-à-Vent is fermented in stainless steel, using a third whole bunch to add structure, before ageing 80% in stainless steel tanks and 20% in used oak barrels. The resulting wine is round and balanced, with excellent structure.

The ‘Champ de Cour’ is sourced from vines planted on granite soils at an elevation of 220 metres, where windy conditions give an elegant freshness to the wine. After harvest, 10% of these grapes are fermented as whole clusters before ageing for 12 months in a combination of stainless steel (70%) and French oak (30%).

‘La Rochelle’ is arguably the top single vineyard in Moulin-à-Vent, planted at an elevation of 280 metres and boasting over 80 years old vines. These low-yielding vines create intensely concentrated wines that need time to blossom. One-third of the final wine is aged for 15 months in 228 and 350-litre French oak barrels, 65% new, with the remaining two-thirds kept in stainless steel for the same period.