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| Jean-Paul Brun “Le Charme” Crémant de Bourgogne Extra Brut NV Domaine Sainte-Syr “La Galoche” Beaujolais 2025 Marie Bered “Marie Bé” Beaujolais-Villages 2023 Château de Javernand “Vieilles Vignes” Chiroubles 2023 Anthony Thevenet Morgon 2023 |
| For this week’s tasting, we return once again to Beaujolais, a beloved, familiar wine region that produces gastronomic wines that just work with the menus you may have planned for the upcoming holiday season. Roast turkey, wild salmon, glazed ham, cranberries, sweet potato casserole? Yes. But as I type “beloved,” I accept that not every wine drinker shares my fervor for these wines, and I feel chastened not to get up in the grills of others about what I love, and they do not. De gustibus non est disputandum—yet when I am passionate about a wine, I feel an infantile urge to share it with others, for them to love it, too. That I do love good Beaujolais is a fact, and at some point, if you are a regular at the shop, I will surely bore you to tears as I yammer on about it. And I admit that it puzzles me greatly that some folks in the wine trade, folks I respect, despise it, and saddens me when customers reject it out of hand, perhaps because they have only been exposed to deracinated, industrial versions of it. So, I stand peering across the cliff edge of the unbreachable chasm that sometimes separates us, often does; an incommensurable, dark river that brooks no rational dissent.
Beaujolais is located at the tail end of Burgundy, and the territory was indeed once the southern annex of the Kingdom of Burgundy, albeit as sort of the New Jersey of the region. Medieval winegrowers in Burgundy favored gamay—easier to grow there than finicky pinot noir—until Philippe the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, banished the grape to New Jersey by ducal decree in the late 14th century, calling it “disloyal.” The reasons for Philippe’s position were varied, but seven hundred years later, gamay remains an afterthought in the north, near Beaune, a distant third to pinot noir and chardonnay, while the grape prospers down south, near Lyon. I do not know if the Beaujolaisien care much about Philippe’s royal decree today, but Philippe’s has certainly not knocked them back on their heels. Today Beaujolais has become one of the most dynamic and exciting winegrowing regions in France, with ever more profound and ageable wines being elaborated from the granitic north of the region, as well as being the origin point of modern natural wine, due to the influence of négociant and chemist, Jules Chauvet. We are starting with two wines not from the granitic lands of the north, but from the limestone “Terres Dorées” soils of southern Beaujolais. We’re starting with Jean-Paul Brun’s blanc de blanc, which uses Crémant de Bourgogne as its appellation (confusingly, growers in that part of France can name their wine either Mâcon or Beaujolais Blanc, but there is no appellation for méthode traditionelle wines from the Terres Dorées; hence, Bourgogne). Recently, Champagne grower Laurent Ployez was in town, and I mentioned to her how I found Brun’s crémant exceptionally delicious, a dirty little secret, IYKYK. She gave me a quizzical look, and then exclaimed, “he’s my best friend!” She explained how they collaborated on site selection and technique for this wine, and when I observed that it was a bit of a steal at the price, she lowered her voice an octave and knowingly intoned, “Yes, I know!” As an apéritif, with oysters, with something fried, all good. Next, the sort of wine for which the region is famous: consummately gluggy, consummately gastronomic; it is hard to think of anything that would not be a good pairing (ok, not so good with octopus or a root canal) from Domaine Saint-Cyr. Full carbonic maceration (piped in CO2), aged in concrete. And then, to follow, a very different expression of gamay than the Galoche: zero carbonic maceration, using crushed grapes and punch downs, much like red Burgundy, and precisely how Jean-Paul once made his red wines (Bered now operates out of Jean-Paul’s former cellar). Two finish, two wines from the granitic soils of the north, one from the highest elevation vineyards in the appellation, the other from fabled Morgon, both aged in concrete. |