Roche de Bellene
Chambertin Clos-de-Beze Grand Cru
Gevrey Chambertin
2015

The producer

Maison Roche de Bellene is a negociant business founded by Nicolas Potel, in 2008, and which specialise in red- and white-wine from a great variety of appellations and quality levels on the Cote d’Or. ‘Bellene’ was the nickname of the city of Beaune until the middle age. The estate is working towards increasingly sustainable and biodynamic winegrowing methods, and the wines are generally known for being some of the best value, in Cote d’Or, in their respective categories.

The wine

Roche de Bellene owns 0.099 hectares of Chambertin-Clos de Beze grand cru, which is planted with vines of up to 35 years of age. The exposure of the land is east-southeast, the altitude around 270 metres, and the soil clay and limestone. The wine is fermented with native yeast and aged in French oak barrels, of which 100% are new. This is wine of powerful fruit concentration and density, and which tend to have lots of structure and velvety texture. 

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.