Vent Champ de Cour 2017, Château du Moulin-à-Vent

A small harvest because of hail has produced this richly concentrated wine. Dense tannins and impressive black fruits are layered with acidity and a tensely structured character. The wine should be aged further to reveal its full panoply of flavors. Drink from 2022.

This grows at an eight-acre parcel at the base of the hill in Thorins, where the soil is deeper and holds more water than in the vineyards on the slope. While hail severely cut back the 2017 crop, the fruit that remained created a formidable wine. It cascades with fruit up front, before the tannins tighten around all that floral intensity. Then, with air, it opens further, yielding scents of figs, plums and strawberries, still tight, but the racy fruit flavors last. Decant the bottle if you open it now, to serve with roast squab and wild mushrooms.

There are some 2,000 bottles of the 2017 Moulin-à-Vent Champ de Cour, one of the lieux-dits that was least impacted by the year’s hail storms. Revealing aromas of cherries, dark berry fruit, candied peel and vanilla pod, it’s full-bodied, layered and chewy, with firm tannins and an oak-inflected finish. There’s clearly serious raw material here and thoughtful vilification, too, but I can’t help feeling that the wine’s fruit is somewhat surpassed on the palate by the supplemental oak phenolics. In short, the question is whether this Moulin-à-Vent will ever become truly charming? My score gives it the benefit of the doubt, but the cuvée’s track record suggests that’s optimistic.