For Beaujolais fans, Roilette's Cuvée Tardive occupies a very special place.

There are few bottles of Beaujolais that have the track record for aging, can deliver the incredible value and are as loved as Tardive. This is a wine that we buy in case quantities every vintage.

The hallmarks of Tardive are meatiness, dark fruits (black cherries, mulberries, plums), olives, licorice, smoke, mint, and an array of floral notes. This is all to say that Tardive delivers more than its fair share of complexity. With some bottle age, it really starts to shine through. Few Beaujolais are able to offer such profundity.

The 2016 Tardive is an especially vibrant vintage of the wine. It boasts an intense mineral core. We love vintages of Tardive like this. In fresher vintages, Tardive picks up a floral brightness, an added precision and even more gulpability.

We should mention that 2016 was a very short vintage for Tardive. Fleurie was hit very hard by hail.

By now, most of you know the story: Alain Coudert set out to make the anti-nouveau, a bottle to showcase just how complex, structured and ageworthy Beaujolais can be. He definitely proved his point - Tardives with 10 or 15 years of age can be shockingly good.

Roilette's Tardive is sourced from two parcels of eighty-year-old vines perched directly on the border of Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent, which produces Beaujolais' deepest, most complex and ageworthy wines. Alain Coudert is eager to point out that the division between Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent begins at the tree line, but the soils are exactly the same.

There's really not much left to be said. Tardive's reputation speaks for itself.

To order, reply to offers@crushwineco.com or call the store at (212) 980-9463.

Joe Salamone

Wine Buyer
Crush Wine & Spirits