Domaine Armand Rousseau à Gevrey Chambertin

The Grand Cru within Chambertin

Armand Rousseau, from a family of vintners, barrel makers, and wine merchants, established his own wine estate in the early 1900s. Thanks to inheriting some small patches of communal Gevrey Chambertin vineyard, he was able to vinify his first wines and resell them to local merchants. It was only after his marriage that he had a decent wine cellar to bottle his wines himself.

Very quickly, he manages to acquire some tendrils from such renowned vineyards as Charmes Chambertin and Chambertin, which will later be classified as Grand Cru. Thanks to the help of Raymond Baudoin, founder of Revue de Vin de France, he manages to build a private client network. Over the years, Armand manages to acquire several more parcels, and by the time the INAO (Institut des Appellations d'Origine Contrôlée) was founded in 1935, he was already counting many a Grand Cru.

Le Pinot noir, l'instrument pour révéler les grands terroirs.

From generation to generation

Ten years later, Charles joins the domain. Before joining his father, Charles had studied Law and Oenology at the University of Dijon. He manages to acquire "his" first vineyard in 1954, Clos Saint Jacques. Father Armand dies in 1959 in a car accident, so Charles takes charge of the 6-hectare estate. Thanks to his good knowledge of languages, he manages to convince merchants of the quality of his wines, and as early as the early 1970s, Rousseau's wines can be found as far away as Canada, China, New Zealand, Brazil, etc..

During this period, Charles begins to modernize and expand the wine cellars in order to improve the vinification of the wines. Meanwhile, the Rousseau family also became owners of some vines Clos de Bèze and Ruchottes Chambertin.

In the 1980s Eric, the third generation, joins the domain. Thanks to his wine studies in Mâcon and Dijon, he took charge of the vineyards in the early years and later vinification. The administrative part and export management has been managed since the 1990s by Corinne, sister of Eric. She leaves these duties halfway through the first decade of the current millennium to her younger sister Brigitte. During this period, Eric invested in new cellar machinery that will allow him to keep Rousseau's wines at the very highest level..

A world-class domain

The Rousseau family can boast that they currently have 13.70 hectares of vineyards in Gevrey Chambertin, no less than 8 hectares of which are in Grand Cru! With an average age of 40 to 45 years, the Pinot Noir vines deliver the ultimate in concentration and elegance. Of course, this unfortunately comes at the expense of yields, which in favorable years are estimated at 30 to 35 hectoliters per hectare. This brings annual production to 65,000 bottles, 80% of which are destined for export.