Vieux Chateau Champs de Mars

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Vieux Chateau Champs de Mars 2001 'Johanna' Cotes-de-Castillon AOC

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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, 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. 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. Enjoy these limited library releases!