My Wine Review Online colleague Michael Apstein often speaks of the insights that come from drinking and comparing the wines of estates with multiple holdings, say, in Barolo, the Mosel, or Burgundy. Same grower, different vineyards, different vintages too, perhaps. The insights are rooted in the fact that a single grower made all these wines in more or less the same fashion. The same hand at the tiller, the same team in the vineyards, the same crew in the cellar, more or less the same kinds and make of barrels even. Thus, when we visit those cellars and open a range of the house’s, say, 2022 wines, we begin with an obvious platform on which to compare and contrast the village and premier crus of, say, Pommard, for example.
Well, over the past several months, many of us have been, quite unexpectedly, given just such a crash course, though not in the cellars or at a trade tasting, but at home, as vast quantities of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 wines of the great Château de La Chaize have come onto the American market at prices that make these comparisons easily affordable.
First of all, you might ask: Why? What was that all about?
The simple answer is: That’s how the trade works. An importer loses a major American agency, that of Château de La Chaize, for example. A rival importer gains the agency and awaits its first vintage or vintages to arrive on these shores. Meanwhile, the importer who has lost the agency dumps its remaining bottles onto the market at a serious discount to retailers, and, thus, to individual buyers.
This is precisely what we are seeing today with Château de La Chaize, which was, for decades, a mainstay agency of the late Seagram’s C&E. Following the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, the international spirits giant Diageo in effect blew the American subsidiary company up, at which point the Château de La Chaize agency passed into the hands of the Taub family (of Palm Bay fame) where it remained until this year.
Just about any wine lover with any kind of lengthy experience tasting French wine has tasted the estate-bottled Brouilly of Château de La Chaize, for it was C&E’s flagship Beaujolais and widely available. If you were a small retailer or a mass-market big retailer (like the Pennsylvania State Stores) and you wanted to have a representative Cru Beaujolais on your shelf, this was probably what you had. I remember tasting vintages of Château de La Chaize dating back to the early 1970s when I first became seriously interested in wine in the mid-late 1970s. As befits a flagship wine of such large production and such wide circulation, the Château de La Chaize Brouilly was nearly always at least good. It was never, however, what you would call outstanding.
Château de La Chaize was said to be the largest estate in the Beaujolais, but what few of us knew was the sheer size and nature of the holdings. Serena Sutcliffe, M.W., in her pocket guide to the Wines of Burgundy (1992 edition), refers to the Domaine thusly: “The Marquise de Roussy de Sales reigns over the largest integrated private wine estate in the Beaujolais and Burgundy,” and then goes on to wax a bit more poetic than I would have at the time: “The château, built in 1676 following the plans of Mansart and Le Nôtre, is of great classical symmetry. On form (for it is occasionally inconsistent), the wine is no less impressive, sold at a premium price, but luscious and full, brimming with Brouilly fruit.” In fact, the wine on offer in those days often seemed to suffer from too much filtration. The wines were, as I say, nearly always at least pretty good, but “luscious and full,” they were not. They conspicuously lacked gloss and shine.
After 350 years of ownership through countless generations of the de La Chaize d’Aix and Roussy de Sales families, the estate was purchased in 2017 by Christophe Gruy, whose nephew Boris Gruy is today’s estate manager.
According to the estate’s very useful and very detailed website (www.chateaudelachaize.fr/en_US), “It is the largest wine producing estate in the Beaujolais and southern Burgundy, with a surface area of 450 hectares (1,112 acres), of which 150 hectares (370.65 acres) are under vine.” It is, in fact, a vastly grander and larger estate than the one Serena Sutcliffe described in 1992 (92 hectares), encompassing vineyards not only in Brouilly, but also neighboring Côte-de-Brouilly, Fleurie and Morgon, and including no less than 23 cadastral-named plots—plots both named and laid-out for all to see on official village maps.
In all the 50+ years that I have drunk the wines of Château de La Chaize, I had until very recently never seen a bottle of anything other than the flagship Brouilly here in the States.
Well, it turns out that there are not only Brouilly, but also Côte-de-Brouilly, Fleurie, and Morgon bottlings, even some lieux-dits bottlings!
And these—or at least a great many of these—suddenly appeared on the retail market just this year!
I’ve since tasted as many of these as I could find, some marked down as low $15 a bottle. They were all good and all post-Gruy takeover.
New management obviously has taken strides forward and quickly too. I confess that 2018 isn’t, generally speaking, my cup of tea—so to speak! It was a hot vintage with very ripe, sometimes overripe grapes, and stated alcohol levels close to 15%.
That said, the various Chateau de La Chaize ’17s and ’19s that I’ve tasted were all delicious in their different ways. I’ve many times now drunk the ’17 from Brouilly’s flagship vineyard, the lieu-dit “La Chaize Monopole.” It’s the best Brouilly I ever remember tasting—and I know that I am not alone in thinking—or saying—this. My colleague Michael Apstein has said as much to me several times now; and, of course, he’s right! For me, it’s like a super-Brouilly with lovely, restrained fruit, a long finish, and real elegance. Delicious wine! But I can’t make up my mind as to which is better: The ’17 Brouilly lieu-dit “La Chaize Monopole” or the ’17 Côte-de-Brouilly lieu-dit “Brûlhier,” which is a bit richer and glossier—thanks to the famous blue granite soil on the hill of Brouilly. This one is positively yummy! Two quite different wines though. Both, however, benefit from the increased acidity of the cooler vintage, so there’s also a wonderful freshness to these ‘17s.
The ‘19s are a little richer, but still with good acidity. They will make many fans. In the case of the ‘19s, I’ve tasted with great pleasure both the village Brouilly and the village Côte-de-Brouilly. The back label of the latter wine is especially informative, for we learn here that the grapes came from three named plots, the lieux-dits Cadastraux “dit Brûlhier,” “La Croix Dessaigne,” and “L’Héronde.” Would that all back labels were so informative!
Now that I’ve tasted with such pleasure the wines of the Château de La Chaize as represented by the Taub Family, I look forward to tasting with their new importers at Vintus. In less than a decade, these wines have gone from being “good for what they are,” as the late Clive Coates, M.W., used to say, to something altogether better and decidedly finer. I expect flair and real excitement will follow. Thus, I can’t help but thinking that the wines of Château de La Chaize could well prove a vinous gold mine, especially if, as in the Mâconnais, Premier Cru classifications follow in the near future. They should, and, if they do, this estate, along with the Château des Jacques in Moulin-à-Vent and the top handful of properties in Côte-de-Brouilly, Fleurie and Morgon, will be on the launching pad. Stay tuned!
Santé!