Alex's Notes on Domaine Anne-Françoise Gros
Anne‑Françoise Gros is a member of the celebrated Gros family of Vosne‑Romanée, one of Burgundy’s most respected dynasties.
Anne‑Françoise established her own domaine in the late 1980s, quickly garnering a reputation for refined, expressive wines from the Côte d’Or, the highest quality area of Burgundy (Bourgogne in French) running south of Dijon and encompassing various famous villages of the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune.
In the 2010s, she and her husband François Parent - a highly regarded winemaker from Pommard in the Côte de Beaune renowned for its powerful Pinot Noir - expanded south into Moulin‑à‑Vent, drawn by the region’s potential to produce Gamay (the red grape variety of the Beaujolais region) with Burgundian finesse and ageworthiness.
Their Beaujolais project is small, focused, and very much an extension of their Burgundian philosophy: to produce wines that express the land on which they are grown.
Moulin‑à‑Vent is an area of the Beaujolais region (a Beaujolais 'cru'), and Beaujolais is part of the greater Burgundy region, but not part of the Côte d’Or.
This is quite a useful guide. From north to south, Burgundy encompasses:
- Chablis & Grand Auxerrois:
Chablis, Irancy, Saint‑Bris, Auxerre, Tonnerre, Vézelay
- Côte de Nuits (Côte d’Or) - beginning just south of the city of Dijon - vineyards that surround the villages of:
Marsannay → Fixin → Gevrey‑Chambertin → Morey‑St‑Denis → Chambolle‑Musigny → Vougeot → Vosne‑Romanée → Nuits‑St‑Georges
- Côte de Beaune (Côte d’Or) - beginning just to the north of the town of Beaune and continuing to its south - vineyards that surround the villages of:
Ladoix‑Serrigny → Aloxe‑Corton → Savigny‑lès‑Beaune → Beaune → Pommard → Volnay → Meursault → Puligny‑Montrachet → Chassagne‑Montrachet → Santenay
- Côte Chalonnaise - named after the city of Chalon-sur-Saône just to the south-east/east of the following:
Bouzeron → Rully → Mercurey → Givry → Montagny
- Mâconnais - mostly to the north and west of the city of Mâcon:
Mâcon → Viré‑Clessé → Pouilly‑Fuissé → Pouilly‑Loché → Pouilly‑Vinzelles → Saint‑Véran
- Beaujolais - between the cities of Mâcon and Lyon - the villages or 'crus' being:
Saint‑Amour → Juliénas → Chénas → Moulin‑à‑Vent → Fleurie → Chiroubles → Morgon → Régnié → Brouilly → Côte de Brouilly
Winemaking & Ethos
Moulin‑à‑Vent is known as the 'King of Beaujolais' and it is for this reason that Anne-Françoise and François wanted a slice of the action. Part of the attraction, too, is that vineyard land here is significantly cheaper than on the Côte d’Or where expanding one's production and vineyard holdings is no easy task.
Their approach in Moulin‑à‑Vent is deliberately Burgundian in spirit, in that Gamay is treated with the same respect and gentle handling as Pinot Noir, which entails:
- Hand harvesting and strict selection of only the best fruit.
- Destemming (rather than whole‑cluster carbonic maceration as per the Beaujolais norm).
- Traditional fermentation in open vats with gentle extraction.
- Ageing in French oak, typically older barrels to avoid any overt oak character.
The resulting wine is structured, refined, and built for ageing.
Terroir - the environment that dictates viticultural and winemaking methods, and shapes the wine
Moulin‑à‑Vent takes its name from a very visible landmark: a 15th century windmill (moulin à vent) that sits at the top of the hill above the vineyards and which became the emblem of the area.
The domaine's vineyard parcels benefit from Moulin‑à‑Vent's granite soils that give wines with mineral tension, 50 to 80 year-old vines which yield small intensely-flavoured berries, and elevated slopes that encourage slow, even ripening.
Due to global warming having accelerated so greatly over the last decade or so, the wines from this area are significantly fuller-bodied and richer than they used to be, although growers here might not miss the very cold, rained-off vintages of yesteryear.
Indeed up to the 1990's, Burgundy would only have three to five vintages every decade that were genuinely good. In the 1980's for instance, 1980, 1981, 1984 and 1987 were rain-affected years and wines were dilute and underripe with the vineyards plagued by rot. Bordeaux was much the same, with many write-off years in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
They have different problems now though, in the form of spring frosts (due to milder winters bringing on early budburst), longer periods of drought but with more intense rainfall, damaging hail, and elevated temperatures changing the style of the wines, often not for the better in recent crazily hot years.
Everyone is saying that if this temperature trend continues, Burgundy will be too hot for Pinot Noir and Gamay in most years and the style the region is famed for will be lost (given that in the hottest of recent years it is already being compromised).
Some are saying they should start to plant Nebbiolo, the red grape of Northern Italy's Piemonte (Barolo & Barbaresco)! At least it has similarities with Pinot Noir but unlike Pinot Noir it can tolerate higher temperatures while still retaining vibrancy (acidity) and flavour.
In Bordeaux this is already happening, they are planting varieties that are able to thrive in the heat and drought, such as Portugal's Touriga Nacional.
The rules are being rewritten: Gamay, even in the form of the more robust and tannic Moulin‑à‑Vent, used to be considered a light to medium-bodied wine at around 12 to 12.5% alcohol. Now they are often pushing at least 14% alcohol or more. Like so many regions, this has fast changed the style of the wines.
By way of illustration, at an event the other day, I was lucky to taste an old Bordeaux.....it was 11.5% alcohol! Yes....Bordeaux. When I joined the wine trade in 1997, again by way of illustration, Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon routinely sat at around 12%. We now get fruit in England that consistently delivers higher alcohol than this, as much as 13.5% in the warmest recent years such as 2022, 2023 and 2025. How the wine world has changed, and in such a relatively short space of time.
I still love Moulin‑à‑Vent, but I must say I preferred how it used to be, less bold, more aromatic, more 'nervy'. Things change though. And cooler vintages do still happen, like in 2021, but they are now far from the norm.
This is a wine you can drink now, or tuck away and it will reveal more and more complexity over at least the next 10 to 15 years.
