These notes describe mostly 2010 and 2011 Beaujolais, along with some broader vintage comments and obiter dicta. For other notes from February 2012, consult these links:
Tasting early can be odd. It is worth bearing in mind when running through a lot of cask or cuve samples. Wines in bottles evolve a lot, but wines that haven’t been bottled yet can really move. So I hesitate to give judgments that are too strong about early wines, but then I get over it and get all magisterial and authoritative, so don’t worry, I’ll give notes. I hesitate most about the wines I don’t like, hoping that they will become swans, but some of them are surely too far gone ever to recover. In what follows, most of the wines aren’t finished. Now that I’ve given you this disclaimer, I’ll opine away.
A few observations on 2011 in France. You’ve probably seen the vintage reports on the LDM website, but here’s my capsule summary of the middle latitudes. The spring was very warm everywhere, and bud break was the earliest ever seen for many growers.
Following the traditional 100 day rule from flowering to harvest, many growers anticipated harvests 3 weeks earlier than usual, some well into August. The weather was very dry in the early summer, but cool weather with variable amounts of rain in July and August set back maturation, and ultimately grapes were picked a week or so early in many places, or on schedule in others. Weather in eastern France was good through the harvest, but the closer to the Atlantic you get the more trouble they had just ahead of picking. It was an easy vintage in the Rhone and Beaujolais, but tough in the Muscadet. Anyone machine harvesting in the Muscadet must have had a nightmare. I didn’t get to try any machine-picked wines since I didn’t stay for the Salon des Vins de Loire but only tasted with growers or at the various hipster or Bio salons. It will be interesting to see what, say, Jean Sauvion, the wine wizard of the Loire, made in 2011.
I managed to taste pretty broadly, but I very much regret missing Baudry, Huet, and a few others at the Salon.
To start on an upbeat note, I was quite delighted with the 2011 Beaujolais I had. The Hollywood pitch would be 2010 structure with 2009 fruit, though of course that isn’t quite true. The fruit in these wines was not as exuberant as it often was in 2009, but the concentration and depth were very much there in the best wines despite quite respectable yields. These are also wines that I hope will have a wide drinking window, rather than shutting down like many 2009s are currently. (Parenthetically, sans soufre 2009 bottlings of Breton and Thevenet showed pretty well and much cleaner in Chitenay than in NYC, but I digress.)
I tasted a bunch of good Beaujolais from growers I already appreciate pretty well, but I think the biggest revelation for me this year was Chamonard. I know, you’ve already heard from Comrade Brézème that he’s great, but maybe you didn’t believe him. I had a vague notion of the wines, even bought a few but a vertical of Morgon snapped them into focus for me, even in the context of the Dive Bouteille. (The Dive, btw, was vastly improved this year. I wore my man-overboard-in-the-North-Atlantic survival suit and it really wasn’t necessary on the first day. Of course, the day was much warmer this year, but they had curtains across the doors and many space heaters and you could actually taste red wines. I opened my coat and loosened my scarf, but I still wore my A-train baseball cap to identify my nationality and warn the natives. I hear it was tougher on the second day when the temperature fell a lot and it snowed a few inches, but I was mercifully at two other salons that were indoors in Angers. The competition from other salons also kept the crowds down. Nevertheless, nothing is more important for good tasting than good Gore-Tex boots and thick socks.
Eric can tell us more about methods, as I didn’t have a chance to chat up Chamonard in the mob, but my understanding is that he practices a more Burgundian fermentation & etc. Chamonard’s 2011 Fleurie was fab, savory and mineral with a long fruity finish and good structure. I’m a buyer.
He poured a vertical of his Morgon as well. The 2011 was richer than the Fleurie, OK, fair enough, but it retained a clarity and good acidity and rang like a bell. It does not have the exuberance of the best carbonic wines, but I think it will hold up its end of a longer conversation. The 2010 Morgon was leaner in form with the vintage, with brighter acids, but was a commendable wine. He held back the 2009 and poured 2008, which was slightly funky, herbal, more tannic and structured than the previous and which clearly needs more time. (wow, there is a serious snow whiteout as I look out of the window of my TGV to CDG. Sure do hope they’ve bought more glycol to de-ice planes since the last time I tried to fly out of France in the snow.) (when I got to CDG, no snow at all.) The 2007 still shows lovely young fruit and is savory, well-balanced and long. The 2009 is unsurprisingly the biggest, and also a bit funky. The tannins are showing just a bit hard right now, but there is real depth of fruit. Lose this puppy in the cellar for a long time. The report is that the wines age well for an extremely long time. A fan told me this week that he would have taken the ’47 as a wine from the ‘80s or even ‘90s when tasted recently.
Also at the Dive, Damien Coquelet was pouring his wines and his father’s (Descombes). Some of Damien’s earlier wines have been either a mite ripe or a mite funky for me, so I was interested to taste. Damien’s 2010 Beaujolais-Villages was showing very well, clean and bright. Not long, but good. A tank sample of the 2011 Fou du Beajo was bright and fresh, but I probably won’t stock up. 2011 Chiroubles was clean and nice stuff. His 2011 Cote du Py was naturally much bigger and richer, and also much more tannic. Perhaps a tad too much for the fruit, although some of those were just young-wine phenolics that should settle down pretty quickly. Worth retasting from bottle.
The Descombes wines were also good. There is a generic 2011 Beaujolais in box that was quite good. The 2011 Morgon from the box was a little hard, but perhaps BTG with food. 2010 Regnie VV was a balanced middleweight, not to impress but to drink, very good. The 2009 Brouilly VV had the ripeness and tannin of 2009 in a very good package, but I’d also put these away if you have them. My note on the 2009 Morgon VV says, “Pow!”, it’s tannic but really good. Put it away.
A nice range of wines from Lapierre. A bit of a scrum around the table, as you would expect at the Dive. The 2011 Chateau Cambon Beaujolais rose will be bottled in April. It has a fresh strawberry/raspberry nose, but it’s a little funky in the finish and was not my fave. The 2011 Ch. Cambon rouge has a big carbonic nose, and is a nice glou-glou. Lightweight, cheerful, not much structure, drink up. The 2011 Le Cambon (TVV bottling, from mag) brought considerably more depth and structure to the carbonic style, quite nice, but of course not to keep IMO. The screw-capped 2011 Raisins Gaulois was a good rendition if you like the wine, but somehow these seldom do it for me personally. The no-SO2 bottling of the 2011 Morgon had a beautiful, pure nose. Clean, and with all the extra smellies you get with no-SO2 wines in their best state. A tiny bit furry on the palate, it was very well balanced. The fur makes me worry for longevity, so I might be inclined to enjoy these soon. Wonder how they will travel? In a good comparison, they also poured the SO2+ version of the 2011 Morgon. The wine is definitely cleaner, but it also plays in a narrower register of flavors than the N bottling. In France this year, I would certainly drink the no-SO2 wines, but if you have a mind to age, the S bottling might be a safer bet in the US. They also poured some wines that they co-produce in Chile that weren’t bad, but I didn’t take notes.
Foillard wasn’t at the Dive this year, but he did pour at Thierry Puzelat’s shindig in Angers. The latter was one of the best tastings I’ve been to for concentrated interest—Thierry, Lassaigne, Pfifferling, Chaussard, Mosse, on and on. Anyhow, Foillard’s ’10 Morgon Cote du Py showed just a bit of reduction. It was ripe but not over the top, quite long, had good acid in nice balance and made me feel happy that I put my hands on some during the strange scramble or misallocation or whatever happened to these wines in recent weeks in NYC. I had several shots at ’08 Fleurie this week, and it has darker deeper fruit, shows a bit of bottle maturity and more tannin on the finish, but is also eminently satisfactory. The ’09 π had a remarkable potent ripe nose, but I didn’t find it overdone or OTT. Big and rich, mouthfilling depth, decent structure. I’d keep it at least until 2015 and maybe longer.
A couple of days later I had a chance to taste with Jean-Paul Brun at L’Herbe Rouge, the best restaurant in Valaire. His stable of wines, from regular Beaujolais in the south to Fleurie in the north, as seen through his transparent and careful winemaking style give a good picture of most vintages. This is true of both 2010 and 2011. The 2010s will please those who seek brighter food-friendly acidity and cooler fruit in their Beaujolais, while those who prefer more oomph, along with some good ripe fruit and structure, will delight in the 2011s. Neither is as ripe as 2009. I like the 2010s, but I adore some 2011s. Jean-Paul reported fine harvest conditions after a cool and rainy midsummer.
Jean-Paul’s 2011 white (an assembly from inox tanks) is a medium-long fresh white with good chardonnay authenticity of flavor, good acidity. A fine edition of this. The 2011 L’Ancien rouge is also a fine wine, clean, slightly woodsy gamay nose, clean fruit, light tannins, good acid. He feels it is “between 2010 and 2009,” a comment one heard in from other growers, particularly in the east. The wine has more richness than 2010, better acidity than 2009. Some other folks preferred 2010 for freshness and structure, but 2011 is fine with me. The 2011 Terres Cote de Brouilly has good material but showed a bit closed on my tasting. The 2011 Morgon has darker fruit, more leafy notes, but is quite long and has good fine structure. Give it a few years. The 2011 Fleurie has more color and acid than the Morgon, and seems longer as well. I really like his Fleurie in this vintage. Moulin-a-Vent is richer but less bright than the flattering Fleurie, but is still a mid-weight floral charmer.
Jean-Paul also poured 2010s, providing a nice counterpoint of bottled wines for the 2011 cuve samples. He has 1 ha of Roussanne in Charnay, his home village (and the Terres really are Dorres there, the rocks shine beautifully). In 2010, it made a very floral wine, medium-full in the mouth, with a pleasing light bitterness in the finish that gives a bit more spine to good Rhone whites. The 2010 Beaujolais blanc is notably leaner than the 2011, less ripe and brighter. Still very good, but you will be able to imagine 2011 when you taste 2010. His 2010 L’Ancien has pretty cool red fruit on the nose. It’s a zippy, refreshing, food-friendly vintage, but more a meal wine than a standalone cocktail wine for most punters. The 2010 Cote de Brouilly offers more. More fruit, more structure, more stuff. Good wine. The 2010 Morgon is plusher still, more rich, but not too crazy. Once again, I quite like his Fleurie. Higher-toned fruit, more acid, more structure. Both this Fleurie and his old-vines Fleurie “Grille-Midi” are from the lieu-dit (or “climat” in BJ-speak) of that name, but he only labels the VV bottling. It’s a warm, amphitheater-like site. Apparently Metras also makes a wine from there. Does he label it specifically? I don’t know that I’ve seen it, but there isn’t much Metras in my diet. Anyhow, the VV Grille-Midi is really something else in 2011. Deeper, richer, much longer than the regular Fleurie, but still with typical Fleurie brightness and fruit. I like this a lot. The 2011 Moulin-a-Vent is less expressive right now. It’s plusher than the Fleuries, but I don’t prefer it to the G-M.
Jean-Paul was recently in NOLA with a group of LDM winemakers. They dined on local specialties, including many many crayfish. I had the pleasure of seeing M. Brun’s interpretive dance where he demonstrated how the NOLA crayfish were too spicy for his classical French palate. Be sure to check out the youtube video for the LOLZ.
Coudert also showed up at L’Herbe Rouge. It’s nice of these guys to drive halfway across France so I can taste their wines. Well, in truth they probably do it more for David Lillie, but I benefit. Coudert is a low-key, very gracious fellow who makes some of my favorite wines in the world. The wines are fermented in stainless, then aged in old foudres, except for one as described below. His Cuvee Christal is mostly unknown in the US, except for a few cases that make it to CSW. It’s from a parcel of Roillette that is more typical of Fleurie than the rest. David may help me out, but my recollection is more sand, less clay, and less manganese. In any case, it’s fresh and full in 2011, with plenty of material in a brighter, less serious mode than his other wines. Quite good. 2011 Roillette is a keeper. Good ripeness, plenty of good acid for backbone, long and delicious. His Tardive (as you all know, the name designates a wine to keep, i.e. not “Nouveau”) is picked at the same time as the regular, but is from 80 year old vines. It is less obvious now than the Roillette, and a bit closed in the mouth, but damnation, there is a lot of stuff here. It just keeps going, rich and long and balanced. There is plenty of structure but it is not obtrusive. Hope I have room in the cellar for all these 2011s. You may already have had a chance to try the 2010 regular Roillette, but in case you haven’t, it’s open for business now, drinking well in a pure mode with good acidity and some depth. No hurry on this. The 2010 Tardive is more settled now than the 2011, very long, but there is a fair bit of tannin on the finish. No real reason to open these for several years.
Those of you with your finger on the Wine disorder pulse will have observed tasting notes for a new bottling from Coudert, the Griffe du Marquis. I didn’t get to ask him which Marquis. I am reading the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, and I’ll tell you, it’s hard to keep all these French aristocrats straight in your mind. Anyhow, definitively the GdM is the identical wine to the Tardive when it starts out, those 80 year old vines, picked at the same time, etc., but instead of putting the wine into foudre, he puts it into 2-6 year old barriques. He intends it as an experiment in aging, and denies that it is a new style, says his parents did the same thing back in the day. I have had old Beaujolais from barrique that were very tasty, memorably Michel Tete’s ’91 Prestige a couple of years ago, so I don’t pooh pooh the idea. It is really great to have the experiment so well-controlled, we should learn something. The 2010 version of this shows a bit of wood on the nose, and is a bit more tannic than the Tardive, but is otherwise currently fairly similar wine. The 2009 was the first of these. To be continued.
Speaking of Tete, he and his son were also at Valaire. I don’t love the wines as a rule, but you could do a lot worse. His 2011 Gamay rose is medium to dark, smells fresh but isn’t so much so on the palate. I don’t dig it. The 2010 Beaujolais blanc (10% in barrique, MLF complete) has to my taste less focus and interest than Brun’s, and I would opt for the latter. A barrel sample of 2011 Beaujolais Villages from its inox cuve has a little CO2 spritz, decent fruit, and OK structure. The 2011 Julienas will be bottled in March has more depth, a more lifted nose, more black cherry fruit, and more structure, but still doesn’t move me. The 2010 Julienas to my nose has a bit of SO2 poking out, and the higher acidity and redder fruit of 2010 suit it well. The 2010 Cuvee Prestige VV is aged in 5 y.o. barriques—they seek to keep fruit and add some wood structure. The wine is pretty good, but not my thing. The wood tannin in the finish may help it age, someone should buy some and report back to the group in a few years. The 2010 Tete de Cuvee (nyuk, nyuk) shows even more wood perfume, with fine wood and grape tannins both. If you like this wine, this is a good one. Tete wisely brought a 2006 Prestige along. I don’t like these wines for early drinking, so you have to imagine them with some age if you are to believe in them. The 2006 begins to smell mature, a bit of forest and fallen leaf add in to the ripe fruit, which is still prominent in the wine. It has harmonized quite a bit, integrating its wood into a more Burgundian package, though there are still wood flavors and tannin on the finish. It’s not what I groove on in Beaujolais, but I think the guy is achieving his aims.
Just a couple of other wines from Beaujolais. Desvignes were there. These guys release late, so they often seem puzzlingly out of phase with the market, but I usually like the wines and try to catch some as they go by. The 2010 La Voûte St. Vincent was bottled in October. It has a big Morgon nose, not simply fruity but varied and interesting. It’s a great package of everything—fruit, structure, extract. It’s on the rich end of 2010s, which is pretty comfortable territory for me. 40% of it was destemmed. The Desvignes wines are always a bit deeper than others, which is partly explained by their cellar work as well as the terroir. They do pumpovers with occasional opening of the cuve for oxidation, so they add some SO2 at crush and also some cultured yeast. They think their method is too risky for native ferments, and certainly their risks would be higher for volatility and etc. than those who practice more carbonic methods. The 2010 Cote du Py was also bottled in October. It is less obvious than the prior wine, more herbal and sappy. It also has a fair whack of fresh young-wine phenolics that I would expect to resolve considerably in the coming year. It has good but not huge acid, should age well in the medium term. The 2010 Javernieres was bottled in July. It is lower down the Py, has more soil, and more power than the regular. They also plan a new cuvee, “Empeneton”, from very old vines in Javernieres. Doubtless this will require considerable time, but the 2010 is currently quite rich, if perhaps a bit more blocky and foursquare than the Javernieres. It has a moderately tannic finish. It is good, but as tasted I have a hard time preferring it to the Cote de Py. Perhaps time will show otherwise.
I know everyone will be relieved to hear that Julie Balagny’s hair has grown out quite a bit. It’s longer than mine now. Her 2010s have no sulfur at any stage.
Parenthetically, it was quite timely to have the mad Michel Chapoutier come out in Decanter calling natural wines, especially those made without SO2, “fraudulent” wines made by “hippies” as I was tasting some totally brilliant examples. Many eyes were rolled around the salons last week. It also prompted some interesting reminiscences by those who’ve had closer contact with Chapoutier than I have. He sounds quite far out on the manic spectrum, and seems to misbehave in consequence. Not that I can apply any DSM-IV criteria to him from a great distance, but the stories were quite something.
Parentheses aside, Balagny’s wines were stunning examples of no-SO2 winemaking. Her vines are 40 to 60 years old in typical sand over granite Fleurie soils. She does a three week cold carbonic maceration and raises the wines in very old barriques for 6 months. The grapes start at 6 to 8 degrees and end in the mid-high teens. She doesn’t do a pied de cuve. Her 2010 “En Remont” has unusually deep aromas for a carbonic wine, though they are still recognizably from that spectrum. They are very clean. The wine is quite delicious on the palate, though lower in acidity than I would have expected from 2010 Fleurie based on other examples. The tannins are light. I would drink this with great pleasure in the summer of 2012, but I would not plan to hang on to many bottles. Her 2010 “Simone” is from 80 to 90 year old vines on granite with a lot of quartz, and was bottled last August. It has deeper, still estery carbonic aromas of considerable intensity and interest. The wine is extremely appealing, and shows a bit of the outer edge of great carbonic-style Beaujolais. Complex and long, carbonic and more, medium-weight in structure with good acidity and light tannin, it’s very very good.
I am quite happy to try these wines from Balagny. I was not a huge fan of her 2009s, I felt she was someone who had picked too late that year and made wines that had the flaws rather than the strengths of the vintage. I look forward to her 2011s. I fear the one hitch is that the wines are not cheap, though I suppose they are so hard to find (in the US at least) that it won’t matter much.
I had the opportunity to visit Christian Ducroux at his Domaine in Regnie. We had a nice walk down the road to see his XXX vineyard, right at the edge of the AOC, though I was interrupted several times by work calls and was generally an asshole investment banker. He was quite a good sport about it. The guy does amazing work in the vineyard, as others have described. He has removed every 6th row in his vineyard and planted trees and grass down the row as a highway for insects, animals and the rest. He reports many fewer issues with a variety of diseases than his neighbors, and I believe him. The wines have no sulfur. His dedication is impressive, as were the results. He made no rosé in 2010, yields were too low. The 2010 was stellar. Quite pale, this was a living wine in the mouth. Great mobility. Delightful gamay flavors, zippy acid. A nice lean finish with plenty of rocks. From a high parcel, at the upper limit in elevation for the AOC. Sadly, only three barrels of this for the world. He also makes a bit of a curiosity, a wine called “Patience” that is basically his press wine aged in barrel. My note on the 2011 says, “Intense. Whole lotta gamay in that glass.” It’s an odd critter. Another barrel from another parcel is similarly clean and intensely gamay, but it has a fair bit of tannin, and has a bit of a green note. He does 6-7 days of carbonic maceration with this wine. I was a bit puzzled by these, but was then somewhat reassured by the 2010 Patience from a 500L or so barrel. The wine was considerably transformed, assuming that the 2010 passed through a stage like the 2011s. It is big and pretty, clean and still structured. The tannins are just slightly drying, but there is also pretty fruit in the finish. Since he forswears SO2 in the elevage, he tries to keep the wines a bit reductive in barrel to avoid oxidation. He adds a bit of the lees from the subsequent vintage to the barrels to maintain that reduction. May note says, “Not your M. Duboeuf’s Beaujolais.” Anyhow, these wines will need to benefit from age to get me going. Anyone had an older one?
His fermentation is quite thoughtful. A couple of days before his main harvest he goes through his vineyards and harvests a few bins from the less ripe but clean bits—higher elevations, younger vines, cool edges, etc. He presses a bit of this wine and gets a fermentation started. He then brings in his regular grapes and puts the whole clusters into the cuves. The busily fermenting first harvest is pressed in a very small press he keeps for this purpose and poured over the other grapes. It supplies natural CO2 to fill the tank and preserve the carbonic maceration for the rest. He likes using the native yeasts from his vineyard for this pied de cuve, but he also feels that the lower pH from his less-ripe starter grapes will discourage bacteria and unwelcome yeasts (e.g., Brett), and my tasting would say that he succeeds.
His 2011 “Prologue” (more or less noveau) clocks in at an unchaptalized 11*. The second bottling in December gave a clean, light bodied ‘natural’ Beaujolais with a bit of clean reduction on the nose. Bright acidity, very slightly furry, more cherry and less strawberry than the first bottling (the one now in NYC, bottled in October). Also some live, mobile wine here, quite fun. Should be in the US in March or April. No SO2. The 2011 Regnie has a slightly ashy, slightly reduced nose, with a crazy interesting finish—quite mineral, but a bit of funky reduction as well. Good acidity, 12*. It was just racked and may be a bit closed. I was called out of the room for a conference call, and Ducroux became dissatisfied with this bottle and went for another sample that apparently showed less ambiguously. Will be well worth trying from bottle. The Patience 2009 has a dark color and a nose that shows the ripeness and sun of 2009 without being at all over the top. It shows just a bit plush and disjointed right now, and has perhaps more tannin than it needs, slightly masking the pretty fruit. Those plentiful tannins are nonetheless ripe. Odd stuff, conceptually.
So, I think that’s about it for Beaujolais. More to follow soon.
This is a one-take draft, so please forgive my errors in haste. Also, I tasted a great many wines in the last couple of weeks, and I doubtless have some of them wrong.
Tasting early can be odd. It is worth bearing in mind when running through a lot of cask or cuve samples. Wines in bottles evolve a lot, but wines that haven’t been bottled yet can really move. So I hesitate to give judgments that are too strong about early wines, but then I get over it and get all magisterial and authoritative, so don’t worry, I’ll give notes. I hesitate most about the wines I don’t like, hoping that they will become swans, but some of them are surely too far gone ever to recover. In what follows, most of the wines aren’t finished. Now that I’ve given you this disclaimer, I’ll opine away.
A few observations on 2011 in France. You’ve probably seen the vintage reports on the LDM website, but here’s my capsule summary of the middle latitudes. The spring was very warm everywhere, and bud break was the earliest ever seen for many growers.
Following the traditional 100 day rule from flowering to harvest, many growers anticipated harvests 3 weeks earlier than usual, some well into August. The weather was very dry in the early summer, but cool weather with variable amounts of rain in July and August set back maturation, and ultimately grapes were picked a week or so early in many places, or on schedule in others. Weather in eastern France was good through the harvest, but the closer to the Atlantic you get the more trouble they had just ahead of picking. It was an easy vintage in the Rhone and Beaujolais, but tough in the Muscadet. Anyone machine harvesting in the Muscadet must have had a nightmare. I didn’t get to try any machine-picked wines since I didn’t stay for the Salon des Vins de Loire but only tasted with growers or at the various hipster or Bio salons. It will be interesting to see what, say, Jean Sauvion, the wine wizard of the Loire, made in 2011.
I managed to taste pretty broadly, but I very much regret missing Baudry, Huet, and a few others at the Salon.
To start on an upbeat note, I was quite delighted with the 2011 Beaujolais I had. The Hollywood pitch would be 2010 structure with 2009 fruit, though of course that isn’t quite true. The fruit in these wines was not as exuberant as it often was in 2009, but the concentration and depth were very much there in the best wines despite quite respectable yields. These are also wines that I hope will have a wide drinking window, rather than shutting down like many 2009s are currently. (Parenthetically, sans soufre 2009 bottlings of Breton and Thevenet showed pretty well and much cleaner in Chitenay than in NYC, but I digress.)
I tasted a bunch of good Beaujolais from growers I already appreciate pretty well, but I think the biggest revelation for me this year was Chamonard. I know, you’ve already heard from Comrade Brézème that he’s great, but maybe you didn’t believe him. I had a vague notion of the wines, even bought a few but a vertical of Morgon snapped them into focus for me, even in the context of the Dive Bouteille. (The Dive, btw, was vastly improved this year. I wore my man-overboard-in-the-North-Atlantic survival suit and it really wasn’t necessary on the first day. Of course, the day was much warmer this year, but they had curtains across the doors and many space heaters and you could actually taste red wines. I opened my coat and loosened my scarf, but I still wore my A-train baseball cap to identify my nationality and warn the natives. I hear it was tougher on the second day when the temperature fell a lot and it snowed a few inches, but I was mercifully at two other salons that were indoors in Angers. The competition from other salons also kept the crowds down. Nevertheless, nothing is more important for good tasting than good Gore-Tex boots and thick socks.
Eric can tell us more about methods, as I didn’t have a chance to chat up Chamonard in the mob, but my understanding is that he practices a more Burgundian fermentation & etc. Chamonard’s 2011 Fleurie was fab, savory and mineral with a long fruity finish and good structure. I’m a buyer.
He poured a vertical of his Morgon as well. The 2011 was richer than the Fleurie, OK, fair enough, but it retained a clarity and good acidity and rang like a bell. It does not have the exuberance of the best carbonic wines, but I think it will hold up its end of a longer conversation. The 2010 Morgon was leaner in form with the vintage, with brighter acids, but was a commendable wine. He held back the 2009 and poured 2008, which was slightly funky, herbal, more tannic and structured than the previous and which clearly needs more time. (wow, there is a serious snow whiteout as I look out of the window of my TGV to CDG. Sure do hope they’ve bought more glycol to de-ice planes since the last time I tried to fly out of France in the snow.) (when I got to CDG, no snow at all.) The 2007 still shows lovely young fruit and is savory, well-balanced and long. The 2009 is unsurprisingly the biggest, and also a bit funky. The tannins are showing just a bit hard right now, but there is real depth of fruit. Lose this puppy in the cellar for a long time. The report is that the wines age well for an extremely long time. A fan told me this week that he would have taken the ’47 as a wine from the ‘80s or even ‘90s when tasted recently.
Also at the Dive, Damien Coquelet was pouring his wines and his father’s (Descombes). Some of Damien’s earlier wines have been either a mite ripe or a mite funky for me, so I was interested to taste. Damien’s 2010 Beaujolais-Villages was showing very well, clean and bright. Not long, but good. A tank sample of the 2011 Fou du Beajo was bright and fresh, but I probably won’t stock up. 2011 Chiroubles was clean and nice stuff. His 2011 Cote du Py was naturally much bigger and richer, and also much more tannic. Perhaps a tad too much for the fruit, although some of those were just young-wine phenolics that should settle down pretty quickly. Worth retasting from bottle.
The Descombes wines were also good. There is a generic 2011 Beaujolais in box that was quite good. The 2011 Morgon from the box was a little hard, but perhaps BTG with food. 2010 Regnie VV was a balanced middleweight, not to impress but to drink, very good. The 2009 Brouilly VV had the ripeness and tannin of 2009 in a very good package, but I’d also put these away if you have them. My note on the 2009 Morgon VV says, “Pow!”, it’s tannic but really good. Put it away.
A nice range of wines from Lapierre. A bit of a scrum around the table, as you would expect at the Dive. The 2011 Chateau Cambon Beaujolais rose will be bottled in April. It has a fresh strawberry/raspberry nose, but it’s a little funky in the finish and was not my fave. The 2011 Ch. Cambon rouge has a big carbonic nose, and is a nice glou-glou. Lightweight, cheerful, not much structure, drink up. The 2011 Le Cambon (TVV bottling, from mag) brought considerably more depth and structure to the carbonic style, quite nice, but of course not to keep IMO. The screw-capped 2011 Raisins Gaulois was a good rendition if you like the wine, but somehow these seldom do it for me personally. The no-SO2 bottling of the 2011 Morgon had a beautiful, pure nose. Clean, and with all the extra smellies you get with no-SO2 wines in their best state. A tiny bit furry on the palate, it was very well balanced. The fur makes me worry for longevity, so I might be inclined to enjoy these soon. Wonder how they will travel? In a good comparison, they also poured the SO2+ version of the 2011 Morgon. The wine is definitely cleaner, but it also plays in a narrower register of flavors than the N bottling. In France this year, I would certainly drink the no-SO2 wines, but if you have a mind to age, the S bottling might be a safer bet in the US. They also poured some wines that they co-produce in Chile that weren’t bad, but I didn’t take notes.
Foillard wasn’t at the Dive this year, but he did pour at Thierry Puzelat’s shindig in Angers. The latter was one of the best tastings I’ve been to for concentrated interest—Thierry, Lassaigne, Pfifferling, Chaussard, Mosse, on and on. Anyhow, Foillard’s ’10 Morgon Cote du Py showed just a bit of reduction. It was ripe but not over the top, quite long, had good acid in nice balance and made me feel happy that I put my hands on some during the strange scramble or misallocation or whatever happened to these wines in recent weeks in NYC. I had several shots at ’08 Fleurie this week, and it has darker deeper fruit, shows a bit of bottle maturity and more tannin on the finish, but is also eminently satisfactory. The ’09 π had a remarkable potent ripe nose, but I didn’t find it overdone or OTT. Big and rich, mouthfilling depth, decent structure. I’d keep it at least until 2015 and maybe longer.
A couple of days later I had a chance to taste with Jean-Paul Brun at L’Herbe Rouge, the best restaurant in Valaire. His stable of wines, from regular Beaujolais in the south to Fleurie in the north, as seen through his transparent and careful winemaking style give a good picture of most vintages. This is true of both 2010 and 2011. The 2010s will please those who seek brighter food-friendly acidity and cooler fruit in their Beaujolais, while those who prefer more oomph, along with some good ripe fruit and structure, will delight in the 2011s. Neither is as ripe as 2009. I like the 2010s, but I adore some 2011s. Jean-Paul reported fine harvest conditions after a cool and rainy midsummer.
Jean-Paul’s 2011 white (an assembly from inox tanks) is a medium-long fresh white with good chardonnay authenticity of flavor, good acidity. A fine edition of this. The 2011 L’Ancien rouge is also a fine wine, clean, slightly woodsy gamay nose, clean fruit, light tannins, good acid. He feels it is “between 2010 and 2009,” a comment one heard in from other growers, particularly in the east. The wine has more richness than 2010, better acidity than 2009. Some other folks preferred 2010 for freshness and structure, but 2011 is fine with me. The 2011 Terres Cote de Brouilly has good material but showed a bit closed on my tasting. The 2011 Morgon has darker fruit, more leafy notes, but is quite long and has good fine structure. Give it a few years. The 2011 Fleurie has more color and acid than the Morgon, and seems longer as well. I really like his Fleurie in this vintage. Moulin-a-Vent is richer but less bright than the flattering Fleurie, but is still a mid-weight floral charmer.
Jean-Paul also poured 2010s, providing a nice counterpoint of bottled wines for the 2011 cuve samples. He has 1 ha of Roussanne in Charnay, his home village (and the Terres really are Dorres there, the rocks shine beautifully). In 2010, it made a very floral wine, medium-full in the mouth, with a pleasing light bitterness in the finish that gives a bit more spine to good Rhone whites. The 2010 Beaujolais blanc is notably leaner than the 2011, less ripe and brighter. Still very good, but you will be able to imagine 2011 when you taste 2010. His 2010 L’Ancien has pretty cool red fruit on the nose. It’s a zippy, refreshing, food-friendly vintage, but more a meal wine than a standalone cocktail wine for most punters. The 2010 Cote de Brouilly offers more. More fruit, more structure, more stuff. Good wine. The 2010 Morgon is plusher still, more rich, but not too crazy. Once again, I quite like his Fleurie. Higher-toned fruit, more acid, more structure. Both this Fleurie and his old-vines Fleurie “Grille-Midi” are from the lieu-dit (or “climat” in BJ-speak) of that name, but he only labels the VV bottling. It’s a warm, amphitheater-like site. Apparently Metras also makes a wine from there. Does he label it specifically? I don’t know that I’ve seen it, but there isn’t much Metras in my diet. Anyhow, the VV Grille-Midi is really something else in 2011. Deeper, richer, much longer than the regular Fleurie, but still with typical Fleurie brightness and fruit. I like this a lot. The 2011 Moulin-a-Vent is less expressive right now. It’s plusher than the Fleuries, but I don’t prefer it to the G-M.
Jean-Paul was recently in NOLA with a group of LDM winemakers. They dined on local specialties, including many many crayfish. I had the pleasure of seeing M. Brun’s interpretive dance where he demonstrated how the NOLA crayfish were too spicy for his classical French palate. Be sure to check out the youtube video for the LOLZ.
Coudert also showed up at L’Herbe Rouge. It’s nice of these guys to drive halfway across France so I can taste their wines. Well, in truth they probably do it more for David Lillie, but I benefit. Coudert is a low-key, very gracious fellow who makes some of my favorite wines in the world. The wines are fermented in stainless, then aged in old foudres, except for one as described below. His Cuvee Christal is mostly unknown in the US, except for a few cases that make it to CSW. It’s from a parcel of Roillette that is more typical of Fleurie than the rest. David may help me out, but my recollection is more sand, less clay, and less manganese. In any case, it’s fresh and full in 2011, with plenty of material in a brighter, less serious mode than his other wines. Quite good. 2011 Roillette is a keeper. Good ripeness, plenty of good acid for backbone, long and delicious. His Tardive (as you all know, the name designates a wine to keep, i.e. not “Nouveau”) is picked at the same time as the regular, but is from 80 year old vines. It is less obvious now than the Roillette, and a bit closed in the mouth, but damnation, there is a lot of stuff here. It just keeps going, rich and long and balanced. There is plenty of structure but it is not obtrusive. Hope I have room in the cellar for all these 2011s. You may already have had a chance to try the 2010 regular Roillette, but in case you haven’t, it’s open for business now, drinking well in a pure mode with good acidity and some depth. No hurry on this. The 2010 Tardive is more settled now than the 2011, very long, but there is a fair bit of tannin on the finish. No real reason to open these for several years.
Those of you with your finger on the Wine disorder pulse will have observed tasting notes for a new bottling from Coudert, the Griffe du Marquis. I didn’t get to ask him which Marquis. I am reading the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, and I’ll tell you, it’s hard to keep all these French aristocrats straight in your mind. Anyhow, definitively the GdM is the identical wine to the Tardive when it starts out, those 80 year old vines, picked at the same time, etc., but instead of putting the wine into foudre, he puts it into 2-6 year old barriques. He intends it as an experiment in aging, and denies that it is a new style, says his parents did the same thing back in the day. I have had old Beaujolais from barrique that were very tasty, memorably Michel Tete’s ’91 Prestige a couple of years ago, so I don’t pooh pooh the idea. It is really great to have the experiment so well-controlled, we should learn something. The 2010 version of this shows a bit of wood on the nose, and is a bit more tannic than the Tardive, but is otherwise currently fairly similar wine. The 2009 was the first of these. To be continued.
Speaking of Tete, he and his son were also at Valaire. I don’t love the wines as a rule, but you could do a lot worse. His 2011 Gamay rose is medium to dark, smells fresh but isn’t so much so on the palate. I don’t dig it. The 2010 Beaujolais blanc (10% in barrique, MLF complete) has to my taste less focus and interest than Brun’s, and I would opt for the latter. A barrel sample of 2011 Beaujolais Villages from its inox cuve has a little CO2 spritz, decent fruit, and OK structure. The 2011 Julienas will be bottled in March has more depth, a more lifted nose, more black cherry fruit, and more structure, but still doesn’t move me. The 2010 Julienas to my nose has a bit of SO2 poking out, and the higher acidity and redder fruit of 2010 suit it well. The 2010 Cuvee Prestige VV is aged in 5 y.o. barriques—they seek to keep fruit and add some wood structure. The wine is pretty good, but not my thing. The wood tannin in the finish may help it age, someone should buy some and report back to the group in a few years. The 2010 Tete de Cuvee (nyuk, nyuk) shows even more wood perfume, with fine wood and grape tannins both. If you like this wine, this is a good one. Tete wisely brought a 2006 Prestige along. I don’t like these wines for early drinking, so you have to imagine them with some age if you are to believe in them. The 2006 begins to smell mature, a bit of forest and fallen leaf add in to the ripe fruit, which is still prominent in the wine. It has harmonized quite a bit, integrating its wood into a more Burgundian package, though there are still wood flavors and tannin on the finish. It’s not what I groove on in Beaujolais, but I think the guy is achieving his aims.
Just a couple of other wines from Beaujolais. Desvignes were there. These guys release late, so they often seem puzzlingly out of phase with the market, but I usually like the wines and try to catch some as they go by. The 2010 La Voûte St. Vincent was bottled in October. It has a big Morgon nose, not simply fruity but varied and interesting. It’s a great package of everything—fruit, structure, extract. It’s on the rich end of 2010s, which is pretty comfortable territory for me. 40% of it was destemmed. The Desvignes wines are always a bit deeper than others, which is partly explained by their cellar work as well as the terroir. They do pumpovers with occasional opening of the cuve for oxidation, so they add some SO2 at crush and also some cultured yeast. They think their method is too risky for native ferments, and certainly their risks would be higher for volatility and etc. than those who practice more carbonic methods. The 2010 Cote du Py was also bottled in October. It is less obvious than the prior wine, more herbal and sappy. It also has a fair whack of fresh young-wine phenolics that I would expect to resolve considerably in the coming year. It has good but not huge acid, should age well in the medium term. The 2010 Javernieres was bottled in July. It is lower down the Py, has more soil, and more power than the regular. They also plan a new cuvee, “Empeneton”, from very old vines in Javernieres. Doubtless this will require considerable time, but the 2010 is currently quite rich, if perhaps a bit more blocky and foursquare than the Javernieres. It has a moderately tannic finish. It is good, but as tasted I have a hard time preferring it to the Cote de Py. Perhaps time will show otherwise.
I know everyone will be relieved to hear that Julie Balagny’s hair has grown out quite a bit. It’s longer than mine now. Her 2010s have no sulfur at any stage.
Parenthetically, it was quite timely to have the mad Michel Chapoutier come out in Decanter calling natural wines, especially those made without SO2, “fraudulent” wines made by “hippies” as I was tasting some totally brilliant examples. Many eyes were rolled around the salons last week. It also prompted some interesting reminiscences by those who’ve had closer contact with Chapoutier than I have. He sounds quite far out on the manic spectrum, and seems to misbehave in consequence. Not that I can apply any DSM-IV criteria to him from a great distance, but the stories were quite something.
Parentheses aside, Balagny’s wines were stunning examples of no-SO2 winemaking. Her vines are 40 to 60 years old in typical sand over granite Fleurie soils. She does a three week cold carbonic maceration and raises the wines in very old barriques for 6 months. The grapes start at 6 to 8 degrees and end in the mid-high teens. She doesn’t do a pied de cuve. Her 2010 “En Remont” has unusually deep aromas for a carbonic wine, though they are still recognizably from that spectrum. They are very clean. The wine is quite delicious on the palate, though lower in acidity than I would have expected from 2010 Fleurie based on other examples. The tannins are light. I would drink this with great pleasure in the summer of 2012, but I would not plan to hang on to many bottles. Her 2010 “Simone” is from 80 to 90 year old vines on granite with a lot of quartz, and was bottled last August. It has deeper, still estery carbonic aromas of considerable intensity and interest. The wine is extremely appealing, and shows a bit of the outer edge of great carbonic-style Beaujolais. Complex and long, carbonic and more, medium-weight in structure with good acidity and light tannin, it’s very very good.
I am quite happy to try these wines from Balagny. I was not a huge fan of her 2009s, I felt she was someone who had picked too late that year and made wines that had the flaws rather than the strengths of the vintage. I look forward to her 2011s. I fear the one hitch is that the wines are not cheap, though I suppose they are so hard to find (in the US at least) that it won’t matter much.
I had the opportunity to visit Christian Ducroux at his Domaine in Regnie. We had a nice walk down the road to see his XXX vineyard, right at the edge of the AOC, though I was interrupted several times by work calls and was generally an asshole investment banker. He was quite a good sport about it. The guy does amazing work in the vineyard, as others have described. He has removed every 6th row in his vineyard and planted trees and grass down the row as a highway for insects, animals and the rest. He reports many fewer issues with a variety of diseases than his neighbors, and I believe him. The wines have no sulfur. His dedication is impressive, as were the results. He made no rosé in 2010, yields were too low. The 2010 was stellar. Quite pale, this was a living wine in the mouth. Great mobility. Delightful gamay flavors, zippy acid. A nice lean finish with plenty of rocks. From a high parcel, at the upper limit in elevation for the AOC. Sadly, only three barrels of this for the world. He also makes a bit of a curiosity, a wine called “Patience” that is basically his press wine aged in barrel. My note on the 2011 says, “Intense. Whole lotta gamay in that glass.” It’s an odd critter. Another barrel from another parcel is similarly clean and intensely gamay, but it has a fair bit of tannin, and has a bit of a green note. He does 6-7 days of carbonic maceration with this wine. I was a bit puzzled by these, but was then somewhat reassured by the 2010 Patience from a 500L or so barrel. The wine was considerably transformed, assuming that the 2010 passed through a stage like the 2011s. It is big and pretty, clean and still structured. The tannins are just slightly drying, but there is also pretty fruit in the finish. Since he forswears SO2 in the elevage, he tries to keep the wines a bit reductive in barrel to avoid oxidation. He adds a bit of the lees from the subsequent vintage to the barrels to maintain that reduction. May note says, “Not your M. Duboeuf’s Beaujolais.” Anyhow, these wines will need to benefit from age to get me going. Anyone had an older one?
His fermentation is quite thoughtful. A couple of days before his main harvest he goes through his vineyards and harvests a few bins from the less ripe but clean bits—higher elevations, younger vines, cool edges, etc. He presses a bit of this wine and gets a fermentation started. He then brings in his regular grapes and puts the whole clusters into the cuves. The busily fermenting first harvest is pressed in a very small press he keeps for this purpose and poured over the other grapes. It supplies natural CO2 to fill the tank and preserve the carbonic maceration for the rest. He likes using the native yeasts from his vineyard for this pied de cuve, but he also feels that the lower pH from his less-ripe starter grapes will discourage bacteria and unwelcome yeasts (e.g., Brett), and my tasting would say that he succeeds.
His 2011 “Prologue” (more or less noveau) clocks in at an unchaptalized 11*. The second bottling in December gave a clean, light bodied ‘natural’ Beaujolais with a bit of clean reduction on the nose. Bright acidity, very slightly furry, more cherry and less strawberry than the first bottling (the one now in NYC, bottled in October). Also some live, mobile wine here, quite fun. Should be in the US in March or April. No SO2. The 2011 Regnie has a slightly ashy, slightly reduced nose, with a crazy interesting finish—quite mineral, but a bit of funky reduction as well. Good acidity, 12*. It was just racked and may be a bit closed. I was called out of the room for a conference call, and Ducroux became dissatisfied with this bottle and went for another sample that apparently showed less ambiguously. Will be well worth trying from bottle. The Patience 2009 has a dark color and a nose that shows the ripeness and sun of 2009 without being at all over the top. It shows just a bit plush and disjointed right now, and has perhaps more tannin than it needs, slightly masking the pretty fruit. Those plentiful tannins are nonetheless ripe. Odd stuff, conceptually.
So, I think that’s about it for Beaujolais. More to follow soon.
This is a one-take draft, so please forgive my errors in haste. Also, I tasted a great many wines in the last couple of weeks, and I doubtless have some of them wrong.