Vivid bright purple in colour prepares the way for an exuberant, ripe red fruit nose. Succulent though this is, there is excellent structure too on the  palate, with firm tannins, medium acidity. A wine with great potential to develop.
Jasper Morris MW - Wine Buyer

Bright purple, this is a little more open than the Clos St Denis, and is absolutely mouthfilling, with deep red fruit, floral notes, a mineral thread and great length. Bouncing, floral, vivacious and very young. Highly recommended. 
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

After lengthy negotiations, we have secured a good allocation of these top class 2013s from Jérôme Castagnier. We fell just as much in love with the generic wines as with those further up the scale. Jérôme began on 1st October, taking pains to verify the ripeness of each vineyard before deciding the picking date. The grapes were all de-stemmed.

Deepish purple in colour, this is really fabulously classy with great density and a lifted magical finish. Some blood orange notes lurk in the fruit. Altogether this is a red-blooded wine – really terrific. The finish is awesome: the whole range is really fine this year.

Our jovial friend Jérôme Castagnier has excelled himself this year. The promise we picked up on last year has really been delivered in 2014. He says that the wines have lovely flesh but also a beautiful freshness, and notes some similarities to 2010. His generic Burgundies (available on www.bbr.com/burgundy2014) are also excellent.

Roche de Bellene, Grand Cru 2010 is polished and beautifully balanced even it's just slightly timid. Pretty mighty though. Opulent fruit.
Jancis Robinson - jancisrobinson.com

Quite elegant, this has plump fruit on the palate before a mineral finish. It is an attractive wine with harmonious, balancing acidity.
Jasper Morris MW, Berrys' Burgundy Director Nicolas Potel has installed the négociant arm of his business on the Savigny side of town which gives him plenty of space for making and maturing the wines, along with logistics and office needs, while keeping his Domaine de Bellene operation completely separate in Beaune itself. The selling point here is consistent competence mixed with attractive pricing.

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38/40 hl/ha. Good colour. Fuller, richer and fatter than the Clos Saint-Denis. Fresh, ripe, concentrated and more classic. Very good grip. This has lots of class and lots of dimension. Lovely. Very fine. From 2010.
Clive Coates - The Vine - Apr-2003

Burgundy 2012 En Primeur - Staff Favourite
Intense, ripe, dark and spicy. Huge depth and concentration across the broad, mouth filling palate. Fine acidity provides the vibrancy and drive. A very fine Grand Cru combining charm and finesse with extreme power. Patience required to see the best here.
Martyn Rolph, Fine Wine

This has been a favourite Roche de Bellene cuvée for a while. The 2012 has a beautiful fresh mid-purple colour, with a sublime, balanced, heady nose, that’s very floral and exquisitely poised. Fine-boned, precise red fruit on the palate, with some tannins behind to lend support and just enough acidity to complete the balance of the wine.
Jasper Morris MW, Burgundy Wine Director

Nicolas Potel has retained the majority of his regular contracts in 2012, though a couple are missing after the hail. Like everybody else, he has had to pay more for his grapes though, especially at the top end of the hierarchy. But as ever there are some delicious wines in the range, and at the lower end the prices are thoroughly competitive.

The 2011 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru comes from a 0.30-hectare parcel located toward Montluisants and is also raised in 30% new oak. It has a perfumed bouquet with dark plum, mulberry and orange blossom scents that gain vigor with aeration.

The palate is well-balanced with a succulent opening, a touch of spice at the front of the mouth with the smooth, plush raspberry and wild strawberry fruit at the back. There is a pleasing long spicy aftertaste. This is burly Grand Cru that makes up what it is missing in finesse with weight and girth. Drink 2015-2025. 
Neal Martin - Wine Advocate - eRobertParker.com - Aug 2013

Clos de la Roche (16.90 ha) is one of the four Grands Crus of Morey-St Denis, noted for the structure and density of its wines which can be austere in youth. Olivier Bernstein’s grapes come from 50-year-old vines. This wine never displays the deeper colours, but the lighter purple hue is clear and pure.

There is a lovely sensual quality to the nose with real finesse. Morello cherry is the nearest fruit. A beautiful mouthful of velvet fruit leads through to a finely structured finish. This is a gentle giant of a wine.
Jasper Morris MW, Burgundy Wine Director

The wines of Burgundy – perhaps more than any other region – are a product both of place but also of people. With individual vineyard plots often split amongst countless producers, the terroir expressed in a wine can be unusually specific; equally the style of the winemaker can be readily discerned when tasted against his neighbours.

Back in 2007, Jasper Morris MW – Berry Bros. & Rudd’s Burgundy buyer, who lives in the region for most of the year – heard whispers about a new producer, whose wines were said to be universally impressive. Jasper duly sought out Olivier Bernstein and tasted his portfolio: “It was terrifically exciting to come across a brand-new quality producer in the Burgundy market, and to taste wines of such class from his very first vintage,” says Morris.

“Now, five years on, Olivier has matured into a confident player with his Premiers and Grands Crus wines of the Côte de Nuits.” Since Berry Bros. & Rudd first offered Bernstein’s wines with the 2007 vintage, Olivier’s reputation in the UK and worldwide markets has steadily grown. We are delighted that the 2012 vintage – unquestionably Bernstein’s most refined and well-composed offering to date – will be available to the UK market exclusively through Berry Bros. & Rudd.

Fine bright graceful mid purple. The bouquet shows a wealth of complex fruit along with a touch of toast from the Chassin barrels. There is dark cherry, perhaps blackberry and dark raspberry too. This starts smoothly in the mouth and then kicks on to another level with a vast surge of concentrated fruit. The structure shows both ripe tannins and a little trace of acidity, bringing out the savoury side of Clos de la Roche. This is an impressively dense wine, with very good grip and plenty of nervous tension. Very special this year.
Jasper Morris MW, Burgundy Buying Director

Bright pale purple, with a heavenly perfume behind, perhaps the most elegant wine in the cellar. Really pure and perfumed, with some violets in the bouquet, immensely long, with just a little spice in the mix. The stems give focus, precision and freshness. Gorgeous wine.
(Jasper Morris MW, BBR Buyer)

Evolved, laid back nose. Medium body. Delicious, jammy forest fruit flavours, supported by fine acidity and savoury, gamey notes. Balanced, with impressive old wine power.

Fine brisk, glowing purple, a really enticing colour before you get on to the nose, a touch of blackberry though otherwise predominantly red fruit notes. Soft and suave and succulent but with presence and structure. Very long finish. A great result.
(Jasper Morris MW, BBR Buyer)

The nose is very sensual and classy, with ripe cherry fruit giving a sense of very small, concentrated, ripe grapes. The wine has a very precise, pure, linear intensity, with a marvellous power. There is a superb nervous tension, with deep, dark fruit too cool to be called exuberant. Crisp with fine fruit, black cherry on the palate, lush and nicely put together, ripe tannins and crisp acidity: this is very fine. 
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

 

Deep crimson. Juicy and substantial. Very clean and transparent. Spicy and grainy on the end. Bright and sweet.
Jancis Robinson - jancisrobinson.com, Jan 2015

Rich inky purple belies the finesse which is soon apparent in the mouth. Very beautiful and extremely long, with tingling minerals underneath the coating of velvet. This is always the most elegant of the Bernstein grands crus.
(Jasper Morris MW, BBR Buyer)

Full, rich and very, very concentrated nose. Essence of wine here. Splendid grip. Very classy fruit. Mouth filling. Great energy and purity. Very fine indeed. (Clive Coates - The Vine - Jan-2004)