Day 15 - Beaujolais

Another overcast day in France where rain threatened all day, but never materialised. As it was also quite fresh, not cold, but certainly considerably cooler than my first few days, I decided to keep the roof on the car.
So, Beaujolais - it's really 12 AOCs - Beaujolais, Beaujolais Villages and the the 10 Crus, each with their own AOC:
Brouilly
Chénas
Chiroubles
Côte de Brouilly
Fleurie
Juliénas
Morgon
Moulin à Vent
Régnié
Saint-Amour

I took the car on a winding tour of the southern part of the area, which is a mix of Beaujolais and Beaujolais Villages vineyards - it is a very hilly area, but also very lush and green and vineyards everywhere..... even in the villages..... A couple of houses then a square of land filled with rows of vines, and then the baker or the butcher.... It's a little surreal, but living in this area is all about the wine. The residents take it very seriously....... and as they have their own grape - the Gamay which is unblended in the wines, it's all about the weather and the soil.  Within Beaujolais Villages, they wines can vary hugely depending on whether the vineyards are on the southern more granitic soil, or the northern more clay soil.
My interest was more in the 10 Crus - after all, they have been granted the status of Cru as they are deemed better than the rest, so I started my tasting in Saint-Lager in the shadow of Mont Brouilly and overlapping both the Brouilly and Côte de Brouilly Crus, (Jane - this what we shared in Village East before I left). I discovered that in most of the Cru villages, the local Tourist Office had organised some type of wine area where one could taste some of that Cru's wines - a good idea, as visiting a vineyard, you tend to taste the same wine, maybe from different years..... and there is the pressure to buy at the end.  Here, while the local producers do have wines available for sale, the pressure is off.
Anyway, back to the tasting - the Côte de Brouilly vines tend to be on the slopes on more granite soil, giving more mineral notes, but here are 2 of each:

1. AOC Brouilly 2009 - Domaine Vallette (silver 'Grands vins du Beaujolais') - Lovely ripe strawberries on the nose and a light refreshing strawberry/raspberry flavour to taste.  The Crus can be kept, not for long, but in my opinion, this could wait a little longer before drinking, but super potential.
2. AOC Brouilly 2007 - Domaine de Sermezy - the aromas of this wine, while strawberry were more wild strawberries with hints of cranberry. The taste was also sharper, maybe reflecting a little less sun in the region that year.
3. AOC Côte de Brouilly 2007 - Julien Dupont - the nose was a little like roses and then ripe cherries and the taste did not disappoint - this was all red fruit with a little mineral flavour just detectable.
4. AOC Côte de Brouilly 2006 - Domaine du Chemin de Ronde - now one of the trademarks of Beaujolais production is something called carbonic maceration where the uncrushed grapes are allowed to ferment in their own enzymes (without the addition of yeast) under a blanket of carbon dioxide. The resulting wines are more fruity, lacking tannins, but there is a distinctive ripe cherry/banana! Yes, and even bubblegum nose and/or taste. This wine's nose was all about banana and the taste similarly sweet, like really ripe cherries. While the after taste was mineral, it was definitely all about the fruit.

Then a surprise.... something I had never seen - a white Beaujolais - made from 100% Chardonnay (AOC Beaujolais-Blanc - Agnès et Pierre Anthelme PEGAZ). The nose was herbaceous, grassy even with slight citrus flavours to the taste. Pleasant enough.

So I drove on to Morgon, a charming village with a beautiful town hall

And the Caveau just in front.....

It was supposed to reopen at 2 (everything in France closes between 12 and 2 - very frustrating!), but they had decided to change the time without updating the guide books to 2.30pm. I had himmed and haaed about going as when I walked up to the Caveau, I discovered that Morgon kept various animals in pens for the amusement of the villagers - which I didn't like.... Not only birds, fowl and rabbits, but also some deer!?! I felt very uncomfortable with that - To my mind they should be in at least a park where they can stretch their legs. So I decided not to wait and moved on to Chiroubles.

Safe there as it was open everyday and didn't shut for lunch - oh, nope, it had decided it would also change its times and not open on a Monday at all!

Fleurie

There was nothing for it, but to move on to Fleurie, famous for having the Madonna of Fleurie watching over the vines.
The Maison du Cru Fleurie was offering 3 wines of the week and 1 wine of the day from the 32 local producers - they each took turns manning the 'maison' so theirs was the wine of the day.

1. Domaine des Fonds 2009 - A cherry nose with notes of violets and roses and in the mouth: cherries and wild berries - light and fruity and youthful and fresh.
2. La Madone 2008 - Domaine de Prion - Carbonic maceration in evidence with a banana/cherry nose, though not as intense as the CdB and the accompanying taste was ripe cherries and raspberries.
3. La Roilette 2008 (vielle vignes) - Domaine Metrat et fils - Red and black cherries, wild strawberries, roses on the nose with a very rich, fruity flavour which was smooth to drink.
4. Domaine des Chaffangeons 2008 (vielle vignes) - Cherries on nose with a ver subtle carbonic maceration. The taste was cherries and raspberries - bursting with ripe fruit.... An example of carbonic maceration used well.

You will already have gathered that the Beaujolais wines are very similar one to another - a connoisseur of wine would articulate the subtle differences much better than my clumsy descriptions, but Brouilly should be a little more plummy, Côte de Brouilly more rich with mineral notes and Fleurie, as the name suggests, more floral - not blossomy, proper flowers like irises, roses, violets. All of them share the cherry flavour, the rest are the subtle nuances that distinguish one cru from another.

To learn a bit more, I decided to go to 'Hameau Duboeuf' set within the AOC Moulin à Vent - a cross between a museum, an exhibition and a theme park set up by the famous Georges Duboeuf in celebration of Beaujolais. There is a part set in a renovated, but disused railway station exploring the transportation of wine, but I'm afraid I skipped this and went first of all to the Winery. A tour of the working winery...

Maceration tanks

Once the wine is in barrels, it must be continually topped up.... hence the wine stains beside the stoppers.

There was also a viewing platform with a view across the 10 Crus:

Mont Brouilly in distance (centre)

The winery had tools and machinery from days gone by:

Traditional press

Once outside, the 'Beaujolais Garden' to explore - this was a natural exploration of the scents to be found in the Beaujolais wines...... I had often wondered what had inspired Georges Duboeuf to design his trademark labels, always with flowers, but having driven through Beaujolais, the only thing as evident as the fields and fields of vines are the wildflowers growing round the edges..... Poppies, Cornflowers, Buttercups.

But this garden beside the winery also included other plants and trees to better appreciate the 'nose' of the wines - gardens of flowers, vegetables, woods, nuts, fruit, spices, scents and particularly roses - it was amazingly evocative.






And next to the garden, some of the very vines:

Back onto a miniature train for the short ride..... (Yes, I really could have walked down), to the Wine Hamlet

where the origins of wine were explored right back to Noah, explanations of the type of vines used, the struggle against disease, the types of soil and rock, etc

The exhibition also included a 3D film in the form of a musical - it reminded me of the film 8 Women, where at random moments, perfectly reasonable people would burst into far too chipper little songs all about the Goddess of the Harvest Ceres loving Beaujolais and taking human form to visit.  Aside from this slightly surreal interlude, the whole experience was excellent - interesting, educational, well presented..... right up to how the barrels were made and an exhibition of glasses, as well as bottles....

The largest of bottles...

POP QUIZ: What is the name of the largest bottle made for wine and how much does it hold (both by number of standard 75cl bottles and in litres)?
[Answers at the bottom of the page]

And to finish up...... Well, a tasting of course, all Georges Duboeuf..... I was quite gutted not to be able to just sit down and have a drink, but I continued as I have done all along by tasting and spitting out the wine:

1. AOC Chiroubles 2009 - a subtle nose of cherries and the flowers from the garden were so easily identified, with a light fruity flavour, the floral notes evident in the taste as well - quite a soft wine.
2. AOC Morgon 2008 - the nose was cherry jam, maybe a little plummy and the taste was similarly intense with rich red fruits. Quite scrumptious, though I think it would improve with a couple of years.
3. AOC Moulin à Vent 2007 - This is one of the few Crus which is aged in oak barrels, so naturally, in addition to the red cherry nose, there were hints of smokiness and spice, carried through to the taste.

So, I managed to taste 6 of the 10 Crus today and tonight I am staying just outside Juliénas on the road to Saint-Amour, which I drank last night with dinner. It was a Georges Duboeuf 2008 and was a liitle more elegant than the others I tried today, but with the characteristic cherry nose and flavours of the Gamay grape, but with slight medicinal qualities (not in a cough syrup way - think more cedar or juniper).

View from my window

7 out of 10 isn't bad and what a beautiful drive today!

PS The answer to the bottle question is a Solomon - 18 litres - 24 bottles.