Sometimes a winegrower is too far ahead of their time to be properly appreciated during their career. Régis Moro, along with his wife Therèse and son Sébastien, founded Vieux Château Champs de Mars in the early 1980s, in the rolling hills of the Castillon-Côtes de Bordeaux appellation, mere kilometers from the Amoreau family’s legendary Château Le Puy. Locale is not all Moro shared with Le Puy, however: Régis took a similarly rigorous approach in his vineyards, working organically from the outset and gradually incorporating biodynamic treatments; he also adopted low-intervention cellar work, favoring spontaneous fermentations, eschewing temperature control and new oak, and bottling very gently and naturally.
Moro’s focus on and fermentation over flashiness, however, put him out of step with his era, a time during which the rise of powerful critics steered Bordeaux well off-course from traditional practices and
into the realm of big extraction, big oak, and big impact. While gaining recognition in certain circles—even garnering “Winemaker of the Year” in the influential French publication Le Point in the early 2000s—Régis’ project never quite took off in the way he hoped (or, we think, deserved), and in 2022 he sold his vineyards and winery to the Amoreau family, longtime friends and supporters.
Along with the acreage and the cellar, the Amoreaus were thrilled to obtain a treasure trove of older vintages which had lain undisturbed since they were bottled. We first began introducing these relics to the US market two years ago with Moro’s adjacent Closerie du Pelan, a Cabernet-Sauvignon-dominant wine which won immediate acclaim among our clientele for its honest, pure, and gusty expressions of this less-appreciated corner of the Bordeaux region.
This season, we are thrilled to debut the first library release under the Vieux Château Champs de Mars label itself: the 2000 “Johanna” Castillon-Cotes de Bordeaux. The sandy clay-limestone terroir of Champs de Mars is beautifully suited to Merlot, which comprises 80% of the wine’s blend, complemented by 20% Cabernet Franc. Named after his granddaughter, “Johanna” was Régis Moro’s top wine, containing his oldest vines (70 years on average, with a parcel planted in 1904) and employing a more serious élevage than the “basic” cement-aged Champs de Mars bottling. The 2000 “Johanna” was hand-harvested, destemmed completely, given a 48-hour pre-fermentation maceration, and vinified in 50-hectoliter tronconic oak casks for 60 days with manual punch-downs; it then spent 18 months in well-used 225-liter barrels clarifying naturally, and was bottled without fining or filtration.
Expressing the authoritative power and resonant harmony of the epic 2000 vintage, this is a ready-to-drink Bordeaux of remarkable honesty and character, the likes of which are exceedingly difficult to find, particularly from that era. Vibrant red fruits, umami-tinged earth, a hint of marine life, and pure, ringing acidity: these elements which make real Bordeaux so special are on full display with Moro’s spectacular 2000 “Johanna”—a wine certain to delight those already enamored of Le Puy and Closerie du Pelan to be sure, but also those with a passion for classic Bordeaux in general.
Grower Spotlights
Since coming home to work at his family’s domaine full-time in 2018, Paul Fumoso—with mom Stéphanie by his side—has steered Gour de Chaulé to new heights, and the wines of this stalwart Gigondas estate are more popular stateside than ever.
Grower Spotlights
Rather than crafting their lineup to accommodate perceived market demand, Philippe and Vincent allow the character of the growing season to dictate which wines they produce from a given harvest.
Grower Spotlights
In Jacques’ modest cellar beneath his house in Montigny-les-Arsures, Emeric learned the virtues of restraint and the value in trusting one’s fruit; he learned to act as shepherd rather than “winemaker,” and his wines at Les Matheny embody that philosophy arguably more emphatically than even Puffeney’s did.
