Wine blog
My tasting notes of fine wines I have enjoyed.
Today is the third Thursday in November: « Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé ». Montmelas is one of the grand châteaux of Beaujeu, the village which gives its name to the Beaujolais wine. There’s a real castle to visit with five centuries of family tradition. And you can stay night or two in one or other of the towers of the castle. All of course in promotion of their wines.
There’s been lots of pre-publicity that the vintage of 2017 will be small and not of good quality because of hail storms, there’s also been speculation that the Beaujolais gamay vines escaped the worst of the hail... so it’s rather interesting to now try a bottle of vin primeur, Beaujolais Nouveau 2017.
Saint-Julien clarets are reckoned to be amongst the finest available because of the well-drained soil and their many generations of experience since the growers were listed back in 1855. My Father first bought bottles of Château Léoville-Barton in honour of our neighbours in Cambridge, the Bartons. This bottle of 1989 vintage was one of the last bottles of Léoville-Barton he laid down for drinking much later. The same year, 1989, he also inscribed and presented to me a copy of Féret’s classic guide Bordeaux and its wines.
I’ve looked after this bottle for more than thirty years since my Father gave it to me, unceremoniously saying “Keep this a little while, it’ll improve with age”. His gift wasn’t linked to anything specific but I now realise that buying a number of these bottles had been his own way of marking his sixtieth birthday.
Beaujolais 2016 still ripening in the second week of September on sparsely-fruited and rather straggly-looking vines near Fleurie church. This year’s harvest at Fleurie looks to be disappointing in volume as well as relatively late because of the hailstorms earlier this year. An enjoyable short stay in the region enjoying a couple of gourmet dinners with wines from Clos de la Tour 2013, Les Moriers 2012 and a taste of the Beaujolais Blanc, Château Pizay 2014. A Michelin-listed restaurant is not the place to make detailed notes but it was remarkable how much difference there was between the two wines of successive years and from the same village, ie the same Appellation Contrôlée. Always fun to travel in an area where the road signposts read like wine lists but particularly enjoyable to revisit Fleurie village as I had pitched tent for a night halt on a motorbike trip back in 1983 or 4, in what was then the municipal camping.
A bottle of the unusual Vin Jaune, Arbois appellation contrôlé, from Montigny in the Jura region of France, that's the low mountains between the Rhône and the Alps. Vin Jaune is matured in a vat under a layer of yeast and then bottled in bottles of 620ml capacity and a characteristic shape, sealed with wax (as would be a port wine).
