Any 'real Beaujolais' being made?

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SteveTimko

Steve Timko
Kermit Lynch, in "Adventures on the Wine Route," suggests readers try what he calls "real Beaujolais," which is Beaujolais that has single-digit alcohol percentage and maybe some fizz.
Anyone make/sell that today?
 
I have never been but my guess is that if you go to the region you will still find plenty of people making wine in that style.

Whether or not they get imported to the US is another story.
 
With climate change, I strongly doubt it. You'd have to pick in July or early August, most vintages. They weren't trying to get the low alcohols in the old days, that's just what nature gave them -- and the producers today are convinced that the customers want heady wine, so even in a vintage where there isn't naturally high alcohol, they'll chpatalize, chaptalize, chaptalize, aiming for 13 or 13.5 degrees, but for a very few producers.

In a similar vein, when Kermit started, with the 1981 vintage, importing Zind-Humbrecht, he bragged that they were "natural wines with 10 and 10.5 degrees of alcohol and little chaptalization." (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1580086365/ref=sib_dp_ptu#reader-link ). Try to find that today at Z-H, or anywhere in Alsace. (1981, BTW, was a really nice, and highly underrated, vintage in Alsace.)
 
Regarding Alsace, even if the worst producers down on the plain, way up on the hills, or in the most badly-chosen and soggy forest-vineyards of the Bas-Rhin didn't chaptalize (which they almost all do, of course), I doubt 10-10.5% would be achievable except in the absolute worst years. Maybe something from one of the protected valleys farther up into the Vosges, where one occasionally sees highly optimistic plots of vines, but much of that's given over to distillation.

Reagrding Beaujolais, I think that Brun's occasionally-not-Beaujolais Beaujolais is about as close to the "style" as you're going to get from a quality producer, recognizing that the sort of wine Lynch was talking about was already an anachronism when he wrote that book. For better or worse. Even if Brun didn't do all the terribly deformative things he does -- like, say, harvesting and fermenting the grapes -- I doubt single-digits are in the offing anytime soon.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
With climate change, I strongly doubt it. You'd have to pick in July or early August, most vintages. They weren't trying to get the low alcohols in the old days, that's just what nature gave them -- and the producers today are convinced that the customers want heady wine, so even in a vintage where there isn't naturally high alcohol, they'll chpatalize, chaptalize, chaptalize, aiming for 13 or 13.5 degrees, but for a very few producers..
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Even among the cheap 5euro per bottle producers who don't work in the vineyards, rely on machine harvest, etc? No more screechy Beaujolais? I could have sworn there were aisles and oceans of it in the Supermarkets.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
With climate change, I strongly doubt it. You'd have to pick in July or early August, most vintages. They weren't trying to get the low alcohols in the old days, that's just what nature gave them -- and the producers today are convinced that the customers want heady wine, so even in a vintage where there isn't naturally high alcohol, they'll chpatalize, chaptalize, chaptalize, aiming for 13 or 13.5 degrees, but for a very few producers..
Click to expand...

Even among the cheap 5euro per bottle producers who don't work in the vineyards, rely on machine harvest, etc? No more screechy Beaujolais? I could have sworn there were aisles and oceans of it in the Supermarkets.
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Those are the ones that are going to be the worst-chaptalized and de-acidified. Sugar doesn't cost that much. And in the grandes surfaces, you're not seeing wine from a little producer, you're seeing what the negociants have bought from the little producers and then doctored up themselves.

Keep in mind also that traditionally in France, the negociants paid by the amount of alcohol in the wine. The prejudice against low-alcohol wine is strong and longstanding in France, which is why Kermit wrote the piece that I referred to back in 1981 about Z-H having the guts to market wine at 10 and 10.5 degrees.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Those are the ones that are going to be the worst-chaptalized and de-acidified. Sugar doesn't cost that much. And in the grandes surfaces, you're not seeing wine from a little producer, you're seeing what the negociants have bought from the little producers and then doctored up themselves..
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Ok. You can see that I have only done limited taste testing on those wines to place their style.
 
And who today is writing comedy like that Aristophanes guy?

Americans are suckers for pretty stories about the mythic days of yore.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Bwood:
Americans are suckers for pretty stories about the mythic days of yore.
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Not just Americans.
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True enough.

But I was thinking about an article I read recently about evolution/creatioism and church attendance in the US (vs. EU).
 
originally posted by Bwood:
evolution and church attendance in the US (vs. EU).
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Not sure what that has to do with mythic days of yore? Surely there is more than one way to romanticize the past.

If anything, I would have said that Europeans are more likely to spin stories about glorious 'traditions' and 'the mythic past'. That has certainly been the stereotype, Americans being more forward looking and all. At least up until now.

But, all of this is speculation. I'm sure there are more concrete studies out there that track how these things are changing.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:

If anything, I would have said that Europeans are more likely to spin stories about glorious 'traditions' and 'the mythic past'. That has certainly been the stereotype, Americans being more forward looking and all. At least up until now.
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Interesting. My observations are that Europeans are much more skeptical, and that large numbers of Americans are likely to believe any old nonsense that is fed to them, e.g., WMD, America was founded as a Christian nation, Obama's a Muslim/terrorist, Roosevelt prolonged the Depression by deficit spending, etc., etc.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Bwood:
evolution and church attendance in the US (vs. EU).
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Not sure what that has to do with mythic days of yore? Surely there is more than one way to romanticize the past.

If anything, I would have said that Europeans are more likely to spin stories about glorious 'traditions' and 'the mythic past'. That has certainly been the stereotype, Americans being more forward looking and all. At least up until now.

But, all of this is speculation. I'm sure there are more concrete studies out there that track how these things are changing.
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Oh, I think you've underestimated the ability of Americans to warm-up to a certain brand of mythmaking and cram a couple centuries of myth into a few hundred years of existence. I'd say more but I don't want to find my name on any "no fly lists" or offend anyone praying for Joe Dressner.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Interesting. My observations are that Europeans are much more skeptical, and that large numbers of Americans are likely to believe any old nonsense that is fed to them, e.g., WMD, America was founded as a Christian nation, etc., etc.
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Skeptical of contemporary political idiocy is one thing and romanticizing the past is another.

My point an extension of the argument that Europeans have a 'longer' and 'richer' history which is even more meaningful to them now that they are no longer the Global Superpowers they were in the 18th and 19th centuries whereas Americans are more likely to focus on the present and the future where we dominate and improve.

To some extent I think this distinction has been overstated but then it does capture some of the late 20th century reality. (Whether Americans will be increasingly likely to focus on faded glory is another story).

And, for our particular area of discussion here, it is pretty clear to me that European wine and food people are more likely to make statements about 'traditions' and 'historical practices' than Americans. Just look at the menus!
 
Well, the claim "America was founded as a Christian nation" purports to go back about 225+ years -- that's a start for tradition (especially since wine and food traditions that Europeans talk about are almost all founded in the 20th century, sometimes the 19th, very rarely further back).
 
originally posted by Bwood:
Oh, I think you've underestimated the ability of Americans to warm-up to a certain brand of mythmaking and cram a couple centuries of myth into a few hundred years of existence..
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Sure, mythmaking is strong everywhere and will naturally have a special place in a society that considers itself to be a Global Hegemon.

The key difference for me is the role that mythical traditions and history play in dictating how life should be led (i.e. what ingredients to put in the quiche). Part of me thinks that those traditions are more strongly held in Europe but I would be happy to find that they are equally dispersed everywhere. Just in different ways.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
especially since wine and food traditions that Europeans talk about are almost all founded in the 20th century, occasionally the 19th, very rarely further back.
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Yes.

Tradition is always a moving target.

But try showing some of the 'quiches' you find in American 'gourmet' shops to someone from France and see what they think of the strange newfangled blend of ingredients.
 
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