Camille Giroud
Santenay Clos Rousseau Premier Cru
2020

The producer

The Camille Giroud maison was established in 1903, and until the middle of the 1900s was a negociant business buying wine only. Throughout 1900s different family members took lead of the running of the estate, started buying fruit instead of wine, and acquired the first vineyard plots in Beaune in 1993. The following years saw some expansion, but stability was never quite found and in 2001, investors bought out the remaining family members. Notable Burgundy personality Becky Wasserman oversaw the maison for some years, revamping the operation and renewing grape purchasing contracts to the immense benefit of the wines produced. Today wines are made in several Burgundian appellation.    

The wine

Camille Giroud’s Clos Rousseau 1er cru is made from a small east-southeast facing vineyard plot of 70-year-old vines, at around 270-320 metres of altitude and in red clay loam soil. Made in a rather traditional way although with oak handling usually on the lighter side, this Clos Rousseau is often a very good value for money easy-drinking red burgundy.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.