Domaine Anita Beaujolais
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Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
I have a few '09s, too, but not many: seven bottles, Brun, Coudert, Lapierre.
Pavel Tchichikov
Pavel Tchichikov
Had JP Fleurie 2021 last night. Crazy good. Don't recall how it's vinified but I am sure you guys can tell me.
Pure, sappy, fresh, crunchy, delineated, you name it. If this is supposed to be "Burgundian" then it kinda beats the examples from Lafarge, Boillot, et al at their own game. I suppose it has the perfume/acidity/fruit-sweetness ratios one would associate with Burgundy but, for me, without losing authenticity in the context of any Beaujolais I've tasted.
JPB is by no mean a Burgundian.
I can hardly think of someone who would be a better archetype of a Beaujolais man.
He is 100% made of Beaujolais culture. He breathes the Beaujolais spirit, whatever his winemaking is.
Winemaking is not really the point here. Culture is. And therefore intentions before practices.
When JPB makes a Fleurie, he deeply and instinctively knows what Fleurie means.
Far away from any fucking considerations about the percentage of Francois Freres barrels that has to be used to go along with the house style.
If anyone needs evidence, then taste his pinot noir bottling... Not a tiny hint of Burgundian cultural bias in there!
I can hardly think of someone who would be a better archetype of a Beaujolais man.
He is 100% made of Beaujolais culture. He breathes the Beaujolais spirit, whatever his winemaking is.
Winemaking is not really the point here. Culture is. And therefore intentions before practices.
When JPB makes a Fleurie, he deeply and instinctively knows what Fleurie means.
Far away from any fucking considerations about the percentage of Francois Freres barrels that has to be used to go along with the house style.
If anyone needs evidence, then taste his pinot noir bottling... Not a tiny hint of Burgundian cultural bias in there!
Ken Schramm
Ken Schramm
Precisely. Best thread in weeks. Months.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Bravo.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Culture is the overriding consideration, but to the extent that wine occupies a significant space within Beaujolais culture, I see semi-carbonic aromas and flavors, rightly or wrongly, as the most significant component of its esthetic culture. JP may be the quintessential Beaujolais man -- in dress, temperament, social habits, beliefs, religion, politics, family life --, but when his attitudes become form, I don't see his wines, no matter how delicious, as representative of what seems to me paradigmatic about the AOC (the AOC, of course, disagrees, otherwise it wouldn't grant the wines AOC status). But I understand your point that if nobody is more typical than him, then his wines, as an expression of his personality, must, by association, be equally typical. Except my taste buds (and my taste) tell me otherwise.
You pointed out very usefully how Jacques Neauport took a technique that Chauvet thought worked well for Beaujolais specifically and helped to disseminate it across the (natural wine) world, using it with any grape, soil or climate, even those that Chauvet didn't think suitable. As a result, semi-carbonic aromas and flavors are now playing everywhere. But, until fifteen or so years ago, they were what gave Beaujolais an almost unique specificity. I had to taste Gamay from other parts of the world before I understood that it wasn't so much Gamay that made most Beaujolais taste the way they did but their vinification technique. But, now, much of that specificity has been lost, though I still cling to it, perhaps nostalgically.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
You shy away from making traditional, whole-cluster, semi-carbonic Beaujolais and opt for a more Burgundian style of winemaking. Can you explain this choice?
This is definitely something that sets us apart. It took us a long time to be recognized for doing this but people are finally coming around to it. We do indeed work in a Burgundian fashion. We start with a tray table where we hand pick the clusters before destemming. We then place the juice in vats, do pigeages and macerate for 4 to 6 weeks depending on the cru. We then age the wine in cement vats or oak depending on the vintage and appellation.
The reason I work this way is because I wanted to make wines that you can drink and appreciate easily, but also that can pair well with a full meal or that you can keep and age in the cellar.
From early on I felt that the traditional Beaujolais style of whole-clustersemi-carbonic maceration didn't work with my wines and when I made them this way. I wanted to age them longer to soften up the tannins.
Of course, Beaujolais is usually released rather early and if I had made my wines in this style, I wouldn't have felt comfortable releasing them before at least a year-and-a-half of aging before release. This way, I can release my wines in the spring and be happy with them.
Do these work methods pose any problems with the AOC's you work in?
I'm not in jail yet so I guess it corresponds to whatever their criteria may be. What ultimately matters is quality. I think that I may one day get in trouble for not using whole clusters but in my opinion the wines have better structure, age better and are just more interesting.
How do you feel about your AOC as whole, and more specifically how your wines fit in this idea of a regional "typicity"?
I think the concept of the AOC is sound: wine is from a specific region and I think it's more interesting to defend a region than a varietal that can be grown anywhere in the world. But it's up to the vigneron to be honest and express the varietal (sic, probably a mistranslation), the terroir, the vintage and the region, not the AOC.
This is definitely something that sets us apart. It took us a long time to be recognized for doing this but people are finally coming around to it. We do indeed work in a Burgundian fashion. We start with a tray table where we hand pick the clusters before destemming. We then place the juice in vats, do pigeages and macerate for 4 to 6 weeks depending on the cru. We then age the wine in cement vats or oak depending on the vintage and appellation.
The reason I work this way is because I wanted to make wines that you can drink and appreciate easily, but also that can pair well with a full meal or that you can keep and age in the cellar.
From early on I felt that the traditional Beaujolais style of whole-clustersemi-carbonic maceration didn't work with my wines and when I made them this way. I wanted to age them longer to soften up the tannins.
Of course, Beaujolais is usually released rather early and if I had made my wines in this style, I wouldn't have felt comfortable releasing them before at least a year-and-a-half of aging before release. This way, I can release my wines in the spring and be happy with them.
Do these work methods pose any problems with the AOC's you work in?
I'm not in jail yet so I guess it corresponds to whatever their criteria may be. What ultimately matters is quality. I think that I may one day get in trouble for not using whole clusters but in my opinion the wines have better structure, age better and are just more interesting.
How do you feel about your AOC as whole, and more specifically how your wines fit in this idea of a regional "typicity"?
I think the concept of the AOC is sound: wine is from a specific region and I think it's more interesting to defend a region than a varietal that can be grown anywhere in the world. But it's up to the vigneron to be honest and express the varietal (sic, probably a mistranslation), the terroir, the vintage and the region, not the AOC.
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louisdressner.com
I guess that like most of the great artisans, JPB found his own way thru techniques and practises in order to reach his esthetic goals.
Winemaking practices are just means in capable artisan hands.
Let's take Chamonard wines. They hardly show any "typical" carbonic profile even young.
They age extremely well.
This is true for Jean Claude's wines but it was true for Joseph's ones.
A lot more for the Morgon than the Fleurie.
In a way they are good counterexamples of JPB's thesis.
On the other hand, 2021 (or 2016) JPB's fleurie's could easily be mistaking for traditionally made bojos. His fleuries age beautifully.
There are perfect proofs in favor of JPb's thesis.
Chauvet's wines never showed typical modern carbonic profile.
Chasselay pinot noir cuvée, though destemmed, show a typical bojo profile.
In the end, we might have to either accept some kind of implementation of quantum mechanics for winemaking or agree on a more complex approach, where, like you wrote, culture is an overriding consideration.
I believe and hope that talent in winemaking is something else than choosing a specific technique to achieve a given result.
Whatever technique or practise is used, esthetic transparency is possible and, imo, required. This is what can makes good wines.
Winemaking practices are just means in capable artisan hands.
Let's take Chamonard wines. They hardly show any "typical" carbonic profile even young.
They age extremely well.
This is true for Jean Claude's wines but it was true for Joseph's ones.
A lot more for the Morgon than the Fleurie.
In a way they are good counterexamples of JPB's thesis.
On the other hand, 2021 (or 2016) JPB's fleurie's could easily be mistaking for traditionally made bojos. His fleuries age beautifully.
There are perfect proofs in favor of JPb's thesis.
Chauvet's wines never showed typical modern carbonic profile.
Chasselay pinot noir cuvée, though destemmed, show a typical bojo profile.
In the end, we might have to either accept some kind of implementation of quantum mechanics for winemaking or agree on a more complex approach, where, like you wrote, culture is an overriding consideration.
I believe and hope that talent in winemaking is something else than choosing a specific technique to achieve a given result.
Whatever technique or practise is used, esthetic transparency is possible and, imo, required. This is what can makes good wines.
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
“In the end, we might have to either accept some kind of implementation of quantum mechanics for winemaking or agree on a more complex approach, where, like you wrote, culture is an overriding consideration.‘“
This.
Often times, there’s just no explaining it.
I rejoice in that.
This.
Often times, there’s just no explaining it.
I rejoice in that.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Still waiting for a dotster response (have a 21 JPB Grille Midi in my sights).
And thank you Eric for the nuance.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Yesterday an email arrived from Aaron Ayscough that seemed useful to reproduce here (it's not behind a pay wall) since it bears, at least tangentially, on the carbonic v. non-carbonic Beaujolais conversation.
CARBONIC MACERATION ACCORDING TO LAPIERRE
In lighter Lapierre news, estate co-manager Mathieu Lapierre recently completed the French version (an English version will follow) of a long-gestating project: an education poster about the practice of carbonic maceration, which he’ll be giving out at La Beaujoloise on Monday April 8th. This is one of those ideas so obvious and useful it is astonishing no one ever did it before. But then again, who would have the authority of Domaine Lapierre on the subject?
The technique of cool carbonic maceration pioneered by the triumvirate of Marcel Lapierre, itinerant winemaker Jacques Néauport, and Beaujolais winemaker and wine scientist Jules Chauvet has had immense influence on the natural wine landscape. Initially adopted by Marcel Lapierre’s early entourage, including Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thévénet, Guy Breton, Georges Descombes, Jean-Claude Chanudet, and Yvon Métras, it has been embraced by successive generations of natural winemakers in the Beaujolais and throughout France and abroad.
Despite its generalization in the winemaking world, the actual mechanisms of carbonic maceration remain ill-understood by consumers (and even many winemakers). So Lapierre’s poster, handsomely illustrated by watercolors by the celebrated French cartoonist GAB, stands to greatly improve the wine conversation.
WHAT COMES AFTER CARBO?
My own first experiences in wine production occurred in the cellars of Marcel Lapierre acolytes Yvon Métras and Guy Breton. You could say I come from the school of Beaujolais natural wine. But lately I’ve come to believe the curriculum - even as it is immortalized on Mathieu Lapierre’s new poster - needs an update.
Not because, as many tasters claim, carbonic maceration effaces terroir, or makes things taste the same. (On that issue, I’m with Le Baratin’s Philippe Pinoteau, who once memorably put it, “It doesn’t flatten expressions of terroir - if we can’t see the differences, it’s just that we don’t know how to taste them.”) But the persistent run of hot, ripe, often dry vintages in the region amount to a wholesale change in climate, one that calls for certain modifications to Lapierre-style carbonic maceration, which, it’s worth remembering, was initially addressed to the much cooler regional climate of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.
In cool vintages like 2021, the Lapierre method comes into its own. Enzymatic degradation in whole clusters lowers malic acidity, while chilling of the harvest allows for a long maceration that extracts aromas more than tannins. You can summon gourmandise from leanness.
In hot vintages, like just about every other vintage in recent memory, Lapierre-style carbonic maceration reveals its limitations. Musts with low malic acidity see it vanish promptly, with an augmented risk of piqure lactique; meanwhile, in low acid circumstances when long macerations are inadvisable, chilling of the harvest often merely prevents a brisk, healthy start to fermentations. At best, you get jellied, confit wines. At worst, you get sweetish vinegar, or something close to it. (Even many Beaujolais vignerons seem implicitly to recognize these dynamics when they suggest that carbonic maceration is ill-suited to winemaking in, say, the Roussillon or the Gard.)
A STYLISTIC RECKONING
I am, as many will point out, not a winemaker, and I don’t have the answer to fill the vacuum where a new model for present-day Beaujolais natural vinification should be.
My bet is the way forward will involve an uncomfortable reckoning with stylistic precedent. In much the same way that those harvesting at maximal ripeness in the M“connais and Alsace are lately experiencing volatile acidity levels more suited to historical oxidative winemaking in the Languedoc and the Roussillon, those insisting on maximal ripeness in the Beaujolais might need to look beyond the regional paradigm of lightness and grace, and begin engaging in more pigeage and longer élévage, like certain natural winemakers in the northern Rhône. Those who can’t give up lightness and grace might begin harvesting rather earlier and conducting shorter, warmer whole-cluster macerations, the manner of, say, Matassa’s Tom Lubbe, who knows a thing or two about conjuring grace in hot places.
Everyone making wine recognizes the climate is changing. But relatively few are the vignerons who accept that it has changed, and who change their methods and stylistic aims in accordance with that reality.
CARBONIC MACERATION ACCORDING TO LAPIERRE
In lighter Lapierre news, estate co-manager Mathieu Lapierre recently completed the French version (an English version will follow) of a long-gestating project: an education poster about the practice of carbonic maceration, which he’ll be giving out at La Beaujoloise on Monday April 8th. This is one of those ideas so obvious and useful it is astonishing no one ever did it before. But then again, who would have the authority of Domaine Lapierre on the subject?
The technique of cool carbonic maceration pioneered by the triumvirate of Marcel Lapierre, itinerant winemaker Jacques Néauport, and Beaujolais winemaker and wine scientist Jules Chauvet has had immense influence on the natural wine landscape. Initially adopted by Marcel Lapierre’s early entourage, including Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thévénet, Guy Breton, Georges Descombes, Jean-Claude Chanudet, and Yvon Métras, it has been embraced by successive generations of natural winemakers in the Beaujolais and throughout France and abroad.
Despite its generalization in the winemaking world, the actual mechanisms of carbonic maceration remain ill-understood by consumers (and even many winemakers). So Lapierre’s poster, handsomely illustrated by watercolors by the celebrated French cartoonist GAB, stands to greatly improve the wine conversation.
WHAT COMES AFTER CARBO?
My own first experiences in wine production occurred in the cellars of Marcel Lapierre acolytes Yvon Métras and Guy Breton. You could say I come from the school of Beaujolais natural wine. But lately I’ve come to believe the curriculum - even as it is immortalized on Mathieu Lapierre’s new poster - needs an update.
Not because, as many tasters claim, carbonic maceration effaces terroir, or makes things taste the same. (On that issue, I’m with Le Baratin’s Philippe Pinoteau, who once memorably put it, “It doesn’t flatten expressions of terroir - if we can’t see the differences, it’s just that we don’t know how to taste them.”) But the persistent run of hot, ripe, often dry vintages in the region amount to a wholesale change in climate, one that calls for certain modifications to Lapierre-style carbonic maceration, which, it’s worth remembering, was initially addressed to the much cooler regional climate of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.
In cool vintages like 2021, the Lapierre method comes into its own. Enzymatic degradation in whole clusters lowers malic acidity, while chilling of the harvest allows for a long maceration that extracts aromas more than tannins. You can summon gourmandise from leanness.
In hot vintages, like just about every other vintage in recent memory, Lapierre-style carbonic maceration reveals its limitations. Musts with low malic acidity see it vanish promptly, with an augmented risk of piqure lactique; meanwhile, in low acid circumstances when long macerations are inadvisable, chilling of the harvest often merely prevents a brisk, healthy start to fermentations. At best, you get jellied, confit wines. At worst, you get sweetish vinegar, or something close to it. (Even many Beaujolais vignerons seem implicitly to recognize these dynamics when they suggest that carbonic maceration is ill-suited to winemaking in, say, the Roussillon or the Gard.)
A STYLISTIC RECKONING
I am, as many will point out, not a winemaker, and I don’t have the answer to fill the vacuum where a new model for present-day Beaujolais natural vinification should be.
My bet is the way forward will involve an uncomfortable reckoning with stylistic precedent. In much the same way that those harvesting at maximal ripeness in the M“connais and Alsace are lately experiencing volatile acidity levels more suited to historical oxidative winemaking in the Languedoc and the Roussillon, those insisting on maximal ripeness in the Beaujolais might need to look beyond the regional paradigm of lightness and grace, and begin engaging in more pigeage and longer élévage, like certain natural winemakers in the northern Rhône. Those who can’t give up lightness and grace might begin harvesting rather earlier and conducting shorter, warmer whole-cluster macerations, the manner of, say, Matassa’s Tom Lubbe, who knows a thing or two about conjuring grace in hot places.
Everyone making wine recognizes the climate is changing. But relatively few are the vignerons who accept that it has changed, and who change their methods and stylistic aims in accordance with that reality.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Pavel Tchichikov
Pavel Tchichikov
not even halfway through the year, this is likely to be the most important thing i read about wine in 2024.
while this thread is triggered by manufactured soulless wine, it has become increasingly relevant for me when tasting impeccably made natural wine that ticks all the boxes but lacks vision, or in Eric's words intentions rooted in culture, in the final product
i say this with all the admiration for viticultural achievements and non-interventionist approach evident in the glass; great things that do not guarantee cohesion, excitement, character i.e. all that makes a wine both compelling and memorable
perhaps there is no better time to recall that the french, in their wisdom, have always insisted that culture is a part of terroir
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
They haven't insisted on culture being part of terroir. It's just the meaning of the word and the concept. Americans have imported the word because of it's je ne sais quoi and then have insisted that it only means the part of the quoi that they savent. My next hobby horse should be to demand that anyone who says terroir and means dirt should say dirt.