2012 Clos de la Roche
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Tasting notes
The 2012 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru has a dark berry, wild strawberry and yellow plum-scented nose that is more predictable but perhaps better defined than the Clos Saint Denis. The palate is fleshy and rounded on the entry. It is interwoven with fine acidity and it shows great length, seguing into its tender and feminine on the finish. It is deceptively complex and one of Lucien le Moine's best 2012s. It is always a pleasure to visit the indefatigable Mounir Saouma at his hideaway winery just off the Beaune periphique. He is a winemaker you can jest with, and he is often victim of my sardonic Essex humor (for example, when enthusing about obtaining one of five barrels of a premier cru, I dryly enquired whether the other four were sold off for distillation - I would not say that to Aubert de Villaine.) And I appreciate Mounir's wines. They used to taste a little too fat and almost over-powering in their youth, but I think he is fine-tuning his reductive winemaking style, achieving more freshness and vitality. I tasted his 2012 reds since the whites were still undergoing malolactic. Among the tidal wave of opinions, one that he emphasized was that to capture the quality of the vintage under cork, the wines should be bottled late, and not in spring when Burgundy will resound to the clinking of glass. Mounir also told me that he paid 50% more from wines in 2012 than in 2011, but that he intends to keep prices within 15% increase. Importers: Vintus LLC, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (914) 769-3000, Atherton Imports, Menlo Park, CA; tel. (650) 328-6639
Critic scores
Average Score
Allen Meadows, Burghound
Neal Martin
More reviews and scores
Good medium red. Musky raspberry, brown spices, crushed stone and smoky minerality on the nose; an essence of Morey-Saint-Denis. Sappy, saline and highly concentrated, with an urgent crushed raspberry flavor complicated by minerals, spices and underbrush. The spicy character builds on the very long, slowly mounting aftertaste, with ripe tannins covered by fruit.
The 2012 Clos de La Roche is attractive, but it's also a bit monolithic. Menthol, crushed rocks, smoke, spices, anise and earthy notes add complexity to the fruit. There is plenty of energy and power in the glass, but less in the way of elegance or finesse, at least today.
Reduction. In much the same fashion as the Clos St. Denis this displays a relatively refined mouth feel thanks to the fine grain of the tannins and while this isn't quite as fine, I would describe this as more elegant than the typical example of Clos de la Roche. There is good power and plenty of punch to the broad-shouldered and solidly well-concentrated flavors that possess a supple mid-palate and fine length if not quite the depth of its stable mate. Tasted: Apr 15, 2014. Drink: 2024+