Just below the Macon border, the 10 crus of Northern Beaujolais tumble south in a jigsaw befitting the region’s puzzling status among wine fans. To many, Beaujolais is the go-to for glou-glou - fun and forgettable juice. In the United States, this most often means Nouveau, the fermented-yesterday, gone-tomorrow Thanksgiving mainstay. In France, the two appellations that produce Nouveau - the Beaujolais AOC and the higher quality Beaujolais-Villages AOC - are also prized for their more traditional bottlings, which serve as the house reds of nearby Lyon, the country’s gastronomic capital.  Then there is Cru Beaujolais, which consists of 10 continguous wine-producing areas mostly named for the villages they surround. From North to South, the crus are Saint-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin à Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié, Côte de Brouilly, and Brouilly. Each sits atop a specific soil composition that results in distinctive variations on Gamay Noir, the red grape of Beaujolais, first introduced by the Romans and once planted all over Burgundy. Over the last 20 years, Beaujolais has emerged as one of the most exciting and influential wine regions in the world, and the crus are most of the reason why. Technically the largest and southern most section of Burgundy, Beaujolais can boast enough age-worthy, single varietal demonstrations of terroir to rival its more venerable neighbor in the Côte D’Or,  at half the price.  

While the crus are most of the reason for Beaujolais recent reach, there are a couple of other contributing factors worth mentioning. One is carbonic maceration, a winemaking method popularized in Beaujolais and still most practiced there. It involves filling a sealed vessel with carbon dioxide and then adding whole, intact bunches of grapes. The initial fermentation then takes place not via yeast, but intracellularly, from the inside of the grapes out. This results in less tannic, more fruit forward wines with some distinct aromas; kirsh, banana and bubblegum, most commonly. Not all winemakers in Beaujolais employ carbonic maceration, but the technique is one of the region’s undeniable contribution to every vintner’s tool kit.

Another reason is the revolution in winemaking launched from  Beaujolais in the 1980s.  A quartet of vignerons, later dubbed the Gang of Four (Marcel Lapierre, Guy Breton, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Jean Foillard) began rejecting high yields and industrial production in favor of organic,  terroir-sensitive, minimal -intervention farming and production. “Natural Wine” as a thing may have started here, and most of the cru winemakers in Beaujolais today are the spiritual (and sometimes literal) progeny of these pioneers. This month we are spotlighting three of our favorites of this new generation. They make wine that embraces all the best facets of Beaujolais. These are bottles you can cellar for a few years, serve alongside all kinds of cuisine, or just enjoy on their own. Their quallity suggests the future of  Beaujolais is in great hands. 

Named for the 15th century  windmill that crowns one of its many hills, Moulin à Vent (windmill)  is unofficially known as the “King of Beaujolais” and many afficionados believe it is responsible for the region’s very best wines. Moulin à Vent occupies 660 hectares straddling the communes of Romanèche-Thorins and Chénas and produces the most full-bodied, tannic and age-worthy expressions of Gamay on the planet due to its unique soil composition. Built on a granitic base, like the rest of northern Beaujolais, the soils of Moulin à Vent also boast a high concentration of manganese, a hard grey metal people once called “glassmaker’s soap”, because it was used to decolorize glass. Too much manganese can kill a vine, but fortunately the soils in Moulin a Vent only feature enough to stunt growth significantly - limiting yields but concentrating flavor. Domaine Paul Janin & Fils dates back to 1918, and over four generations of family winemaking has developed a sterling reputation for devotion to craft and integrity. The “Vignes de Tremblay” bottling is sourced primarily from the estate’s oldest vineyards.

Bordering Moulin à Vent to the southwest, and sharing its throne, is Fleurie, called the “Queen of Beaujolais” because of the elegant floral character its wines tend to exude (though, strangely enough, the Cru is actually named after the Roman general Floricum, not the French word for flower.) The soil here is mostly pink granite  underneath steep green hillsides, producing lush and lively wines, not as tannic as Moulin à Vent, but with great concentrated fruit and acidity. Domaine Chapel is a remarkable recent Beaujolais success story, founded by spouses and food and wine industry veterans  David Chapel and Michele Smith in 2016. Charbonnières is a hillside vineyard on the edge of a forest that they purchased from Fleurie legend Yvon Métras, considered by some the greatest winemaker in Beaujolais. Too steep for horses or tractors, it has been farmed by hand organically for 20 years and yields Fleurie with an herbaceous complexity to complement the floral signature.

Côte de Brouilly, one of the smallest crus in Beaujolais, exists on the slopes of Mont Brouilly, an extinct volcano. It is surrounded on all sides by Brouilly, the largest and southern most of the 10 Crus. The distinction is generally that Brouilly produces lighter more sensuous wine while, Côte de Brouilly, on account of its volcanic soil and better exposure and drainage, has more depth and structure. But Alex Foillard, son of legendary Morgon vigneron and Gang of Four member Jean Foillard has been known to blur these boundaries. At the tender age of 24, he purchased  a hectare in each cru, and he makes silky, aromatic and structured wine from both that will drink beautifully for years to come. 

Cheers! 

The PlumpJack Wine Buying Team