2015 Domaine Armand Rousseau, Gevrey-Chambertin, Clos du Chateau

Good bright red. Lovely perfumed aromas and flavors of red cherry and rose petal. Sappy and creamy on the palate--in fact almost voluptuous for a young Rousseau wine--but without quite the delineation or distinction of the following samples I tasted here. Finishes juicy and spicy. These vines belong to the Château de Gevrey-Chambertin, which was purchased by a Chinese businessman in 2012. Rousseau has been managing the vineyards while the château itself is being restored. He pulled up the oldest vines here (80 years of age) this year for replanting but the remaining plants still average 60 years of age.

Domaine Armand Rousseau's 2015 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos du Château offers up an expressive nose of red berries, cedar, dried flowers and orange peel. On the palate, the wine is medium-bodied, open-knit and savory, with moderate concentration and length, seemingly adapted to near-term consumption—and though Rousseau can often be deceptive in that regard, I'm not convinced that the Clos du Château is yet producing raw materials that give it the benefit of the doubt. Cyrielle Rousseau observed that fully one-third of the Clos has now been replanted, so work to rehabilitate its rather neglected vineyards is evidently preceding apace.