Château de Pierreux - 2020 vintage

Odenas - Generous aromas

The harvests

Located at the foot of Mont Brouilly, the Château de Pierreux vineyard covers 106 ha (261.93 ac): 97 ha (239.69 ac) of Brouilly, 7 ha (17.29 ac) of Chardonnay and 2 ha (4.94ac) of Beaujolais-Villages. It consists of over 110 plots growing in granite soils that feature a blend of sand, porphyry, schist and silica. One notable feature of this year was the Gamay’s very healthy foliage, combined with grapes that had not coped well with the heat, whereas with the Chardonnay, it was the other way round!
24th August: we began with the Brouilly. Although the grapes were healthy-looking, some had suffered from too much sun – yields were negatively affected too!
29th August: the Chardonnay produced good quantities of extremely fine grapes which were not overly affected by the heat and lack of rainfall.
4th September: end of the harvest.

Initial tastings

‘Brouilly: the Gamay grapes featured very high sugar content, intense colour and high levels of potential alcohol. We adapted our vinification approach as a result, and after destemming, implemented a short period of vatting (2 weeks), which was enough to bring out a beautiful deep red shade and gorgeous ripe summer fruit, almost jammy aromas, underpinned by supple, well-balanced tannins. The Brouilly are being aged in oak foudres. The Chardonnays are very nice, well-balanced, boasting citrus fruit and tropical fruit notes. Alcoholic fermentation was carried out in part in demi-muids (450 litre barrels) and the wines are continuing the ageing process in these barrels.’
ALAIN DUGOUJARD