So, it’s Beaujolais Nouveau day. For quite a while, those of us who love Gamay and Beaujolais were a bit embarrassed by this seemingly outdated celebration. We cringed when we saw a region market itself through its worst wines. But as the reputation of Beaujolais has been rebuilt, now people are taking this day – the 17th November – as a chance to celebrate Beaujolais more widely. And we’re also seeing the emergence of some properly delicious Nouveau wines. This is a great example: it’s smash able and affordable, and is a primary, infant expression of the new vintage, capturing both the year and the place in a quick preview of what is to come.
It’s from Château de Grandmont, and one of the partners here is wine merchant and Beaujolais expert Chris Piper, who is selling the wine at £8.80 in the UK.
The wine is made from 52 year-old vines (planted on Vialla rootstock) from their Blacé vineyards in the Beaujolais Villages area. The soils here aren’t pure granite, but rather clay and limestone, with some granitic rocks. The vines are hand-picked, and the Gamay grapes are given a brief, honest six day fermentation (without any tricks such as thermovinification, which involves heating grapes and must up before fermentation begins to extract more colour and aroma from the skins), and then it is pressed. Minimal sulphur dioxide is added, and only at bottling. Screwcap seal (saranex liner).
Château de Grandmont Beaujolais Villages Nouveau 2017 France
12.5% alcohol. Vivid and aromatic, this shows black cherries, herbs and some subtle gravel notes on the nose. The brightly fruited palate has a distinct stoniness that I often find with Gamay, and delcioulsy primary, forward black cherry and raspberry fruit. There’s some grip here, and good acidity, and this all helps keep the juicy, primary fruit honest. There’s almost a cheesy, meaty twist on the finish. It may be nouveau, but it has a twist of seriousness as well as the delicious smashability. 90/100 (£8.80 www.christopherpiperwines.co.uk)
Find this wine with wine-searcher.com
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This was a seriously impressive wine. I doubt it would be identified as Beaujolais Nouveau for most if served blind. As JG says, the savoury meaty twist was more reminiscent of a good Cotes Du Rhone than anything else – at GBP8.80 this is tremendous value – a top qualifier for JG’s red value wine of the year if you ask me. I’d also say we should get JG to introduce a new ratio of price / quality x 1000 to indicate tremendous value of 97 points !!!!. Let’s compare this to a great Bordeaux scoring say 97 points but costing GBP70 (minimum) and yielding only 72 points !!! “jokes” aren’t I so clever. 🙂
You do not mention whether the wines undergo maceration carbonique? The reason I ask is, I wonder if you could ferment the wine in 6 days using that process ?
A truly wonderful wine!