Beaujolais

I am drinking Beaujolais – oh dear, how low can you go?

As we gain wine wisdom and search to taste perfection, Beaujolais is not the first thing which you think of. But why not? How did it end this way?

My knowledge about Beaujolais is close to zero. As a Dane I know that former racer/playboy Thorkild Thyrring raced to Beaujolais each year, in this Toyota MR2, wearing a navy blue blazer and white turtle neck (with streamers on his collar) and picked up the very first wine from France, which always came from Beaujolais. A returning event and everyone seemed to agree that the wine itself was crap.

Beaujolais was never in the category of earning the glamorous high scores from the usual suspects, so I concluded that it wasn’t really serious wine.

Well – the wine in hand is proof of the contrary.

On the image you have the 2008 “Morgon Cote de Py” from Jean Foillard, which I had the other day. It’s 100% Gamay and offers beautiful kirsch aromas with herbes de Provence spices and notes of rubber( bicycle tubes). There are also some young black fruits, almost meaty in their character. However the wine is light-weighted and this is even more evident on the palate where it curls with splendid mineral freshness and an authentic/rustic feeling from those herbs and black meaty fruits.

At midsummer I had the 2007 of this wine in magnum. Even better – possessing brighter and sweeter red fruit, but still with those wonderful spices. The 2007 is slimmer in style – fresher and offering spectacular drinking pleasure.

These wines may not be the most complex wines I have ever tasted – but does it really matter, when the drinkability are so high? No – it doesn’t and this is once again a reminder that today’s schematic set-up on points tells you nothing about the drinking pleasure on wine – it’s just a snapshot – one mans analysis and opinion, nothing else.

I took me 17 years discover Beaujolais or did it just took me 17 years to discover that a good wine is a wine which drinks well from the first to the last glass?

One of my readers has said: “Beaujolais is oh so French” – I couldn’t agree more.

Both tasted in Zalto Burgundy – the ultimate glass for Beaujolais…or what do I know?