Dom. Armand Rousseau
Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru
Gevrey Chambertin
2002

The producer

Armand Rousseau is, without a doubt, one of Burgundy’s finest domaines. The domaine has around 14 hectares of vineyards in the village of Gevrey-Chambertin, of which almost 8.5 hectares are in Grand Cru vineyards, including Chambertin-Clos de Beze, Le Chambertin, Charmes-Chambertin, Mazis-Chambertin, and also with a piece of land in the Clos-Saint-Jacques Premier Cru.

Armand Rousseau is famous for being a frontrunner for wines of the highest quality in the region and was one of the pioneers for domaine bottling in the 1930s. He was succeeded by son Charles in 1959 and today grandson Eric is in charge.

The vineyards are handled with great care and attention to detail, and with minimal use of spraying. 90% of the grape material is destemmed and the different vineyards see varying proportions of new oak barrels depending on vintage.

As must be expected for the cream of the cream of the Cote d’Or these wines are prohibitively expensive, frequently being traded for several thousands of pounds for a single bottle.

The wine

Armand Rousseau owns 0.51 hectares in the Charmes-Chambertin grand cru vineyard, which is lying directly below the famous Chambertin vineyard itself. The soil is chalky and rich in stones and the vineyard north-east facing. Rousseau ferments and macerates the Charmes for around 20 days, after which they are then aged in usually 1 year old barrels for up to 24 months. True to the Rousseau style these are seductive wines of incredible concentration and, unique for the Charmes vineyard, a certain softness, not found in the other wines. 

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.