Rediscover Beaujolais

I recently had the pleasure of tasting some of the 2009 Beaujolais wines and was amazed by the quality. It is said to be the finest Beaujolais vintage since 1948, which I am not quite old enough to vouch for, but it is certainly the best vintage I have tasted.

I am sure most people reading this will think of Beaujolais as thin wine lacking body, most of which is released early as Beaujolais Nouveau is October/November. Certainly there has been too much of this wine produced in the past and thin wine continues in some of the well known names you find in the supermarkets. These wines are often picked at minimum ripeness and undergo chapitalisation (adding sugar) to increase the alcohol content.

In recent years however there has been a revival amoung small domaines to make denser wines true to their terroir which can rival the more lauded wines of Burgundy to the north. The small artisan producers we work with produce wines of real depth and character far removed from the mass produced pale wines of the large producers.

Beaujolais lies in the east of France betweeen the Rhone Valley to the south and Burgundy in the north. The wines are made exclusively from the Gamay grape on pricipally granite soil, but with important variations within the sub regions. The winemaking is unusual in that it involves semi-carbonic maceration where whole bunches of grapes arrive at the vineyard and start to ferment at the bottom from the weight of grapes on top. This helps give some of the distinctive aromas found in Beaujolais.

About half of all production is sold as the basic appellation Beaujolais, a quarter as Beaujolais-Villages and the remainder named after the communes or Crus where they are considered distinctive enough to have their own appellation.

At Talking Wines we only stock wines made at the domaine with producers making distinctive wine true to its origins. This currently includes the following Beaujolais Crus.

Moulin-A-Vent Gerard Charvet 2009 £11.99
Fleurie Les Roches Lucien Lardy 2008 £11.99
Morgon Vielles Vignes Domaine Laurent Gauthier 2006 £9.99
Brouilly Domaine Champier 2007 £10.50

Each have subtle differences due to the soil types, location and winemaking. These wines along with our ever-popular Beaujolais Emmanuel Mandrillon 2009 (£8.50) represent an excellent range of wines to discover the real Beaujolais. I hope you will join me on Saturday 15th May to try some of the wines for yourself.