Vine Path Blog 11/20: Beaujolais Season Baby!
Beaujolais Season Baby! Vine Path Blog 11/20
Per tradition here in the club, this month’s collection is our annual reminder that Beaujolais is amazing and nothing to scoff at. Gone are the days when all we knew of Beaujolais was Nouveau and DuBoeuf. New vistas lie ahead! Despite Beaujolais’ rising reputation among wine professionals and geeks alike, it is still a misunderstood category. We all know Nouveau, but not so many of us know Cru Beaujolais. Like the rest of Burgundy (by the way, Beaujolais is inside Burgundy), Beaujolais has Crus, small villages famous for producing Gamay with a distinctive enough identity that they name it of its origin. This month we’re featuring four different wines from major Cru Beaujolais producers that were, and still are, massively influential in the Beaujolais quality revolution.
Jules Chauvet
New Age Beaujolais
It’s impossible to understand Beaujolais today without talking about a man named Jules Chauvet. While Chauvet is a veritable nobody to wine drinkers globally, he’s one of the most important winemakers in the history of France. In the 1980’s, Jules, a native of Beaujolais, began consulting with major producers in Beaujolais various Crus. Jules was so influential to these winemakers that he became a kind of guru for Gamay. A staunch advocate for wines vinified without inputs and made from vineyards treated without chemicals, it was Jules’ philosophy that would percolate into what we know today as the natural wine movement. Winemakers in Beaujolais took notice and began to swing away from over-treated and over-producing conventionally farmed vineyards towards lower, more concentrated yields and less winemaking inputs. The result was a quality revolution unlike any other in France. The wines of Beaujolais went from being a joke to French wine drinkers to becoming the hottest selling wines in the hippest Parisian wine bars, all in less than a generation. All of the producers featured in this month’s collection embody this philosophical turn with a few of them having worked directly with Chauvet.
Domaine Chignard Juliénas Beauvernay
Domaine Chignard 2018 Juliénas Beauvernay
Julienas is one of the smallest of the Crus, located all the way north in the appellation. It abuts the Cote Maconnais in Burgundy and produces some of the lightest, most elegant and aromatic examples of Gamay one is likely to find. Domaine Chignard is a steward of this area, constantly producing excellent wines of extraordinary value. The Domaine is headquartered just south of Julienas in Fleurie and is spearheaded by fourth generation vigneron Michel Chignard. Domaine Chignard was a major part of the first push to take Gamay and Cru Beaujolais seriously, which is why their wines are consistent, refined, complex, and obviously compelling. The Chignard gamay tastes like it has a bone to pick and as if it has something to prove.
Jean-Paul Brun
Jean-Paul Brun Côte de Brouilly
Jean-Paul Brun 2017 Côte de Brouilly
While Michel Chignard was toiling away in the north of the appellation, Jean-Paul Brun was leading the way in the south. Over the years he’s grown his estate to encompass over 60 hectares of organically grown vines. What’s unusual about Jean-Paul’s Gamay is that the grapes are completely destemmed (a rarity in the region) before vinification and the wines are made and raised as if they were Grand Cru Burgundy, undergoing extensive maceration and a longer aging in barrel before release. These technical differences are notable in his wines when you taste them. They have greater austerity then one might be used to in Beaujolais, and more structure as well. This bottling comes from the Cote de Brouilly in the southernmost part of the appellation. It’s a prized Cru, notable for producing some of the best Gamay available. This wine is no exception to that.
Claude-Emmanuelle and her brother Louis-Benoît of Louis Claude Desvignes
Louis Claude Desvignes ‘La Voûte Saint-Vincent’ Morgon
Louis Claude Desvignes 2018 ‘La Voûte Saint-Vincent’ Morgon
Of all the Crus, Morgon is probably the most famous. This was the home appellation of Jules Chauvet so his influence runs big in the area's wines. Morgon is notable for its distinctive pink-granite soils, famous for producing dense and intense Gamay with a lot of character and structure. The Desvignes family, who have been producing wines since the mid-1700’s, follow the philosophy of Jean-Paul Brun in that they’re aiming to produce a more tannic, more age-worthy, more ‘pinot-ized’ kind of Gamay. For the cuvee La Voute Saint-Vincent, a couple of estate parcels are blended and aged exclusively in concrete vats. In fact, this producer refuses to use any wood barrels in the production of their wines, claiming that “barrels are like make-up”, a common refrain these days in France.
Cedric Lecareaux of Domaine des Capreoles
Domaine des Capréoles 2019 ‘'l’Amourgandise’ Terroir de Lantignié
Domaine des Capreoles is part of the new generation of forward thinking winemakers that continue to carry the mantle of the great innovators that came before them. These so-called ‘third wave’ producers tend to make wines that lean more in a funky and wild direction. Capreoles is a model producer of this style, able to make beautiful, vibrant wines while also keeping a slightly rustic edge. Lantignie is one of only 38 villages in Beaujolais-Villages allowed to be labeled with its name. This is not something you’re likely to find anywhere. You’re also likely to inspire blank stares from any wine steward you ask about it. This is obscure Beaujolais. Cedric Lecareaux, vigneron at Domaine des Capreoles, is a master of his craft, meticulously futzing over each and every detail. And he has to, since he is making wine on the edge with almost no measure of control. It’s a wonder how his wines are so clean, consistent, and flawless but, I suppose that’s what you should expect from a perfectionist.
A vineyard in Moulin-a-Vent, Beaujolais