(NYT) Dining: Flowery, Yes. But the Wines of Fleurie Offer More.

[AKR]

Dining: Flowery, Yes. But the Wines of Fleurie Offer More.
2021-02-23 16:40:44.434 GMT

By Eric Asimov

(New York Times) -- Years from now, when the history of Beaujolais is written,
it will be fascinating to see how the wine is portrayed over the first part of
the 21st century.

Will that period, 2000 to 2020, be perceived as a turning point — the era when
the wine finally shed its reputation as joyous but inconsequential? Perhaps it
will be remembered as the time when prices went through the roof and top
Beaujolais became unaffordable.

Or maybe Beaujolais finally came to be recognized during that time as
encompassing many different sorts of wines, from mass-processed to honest;
refreshing and smile-inducing to complex and thoughtful, yet still joyful.

Here at Wine School, we hope to avoid the easy answers. We recognize that
almost every time a simple definition is pinned to any sort of wine, a deeper
look reveals complexities that require elaboration.

A flashcard system of quick associations may be fine for a wine quiz, but
that’s not the way we work. Instead, we accept that few subjects in wine have
easy answers, and we’ve made peace with that.

Such is the case with Beaujolais, a wine that long has been typecast as
simple, easy and thirst-quenching. Wines like these may have been epitomized
by Beaujolais Nouveau, which began as a regional ritual celebrating the first
wine of the harvest and became a global craze in the 1970s and ’80s. But
Beaujolais had that reputation long before Nouveau left its dominant
impression.

In his essential 1988 book, “Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour
of France,” Kermit Lynch wrote of speaking to old-timers, who recalled “real
Beaujolais” as light and tart, and quoted Richard Olney, the food and wine
writer, describing its flavor as “a rush of green fruit.”

(What a curious description, and what fruits did he have in mind? Greengage
plums? Green apples? Gooseberries? Green figs? Or did he mean unripe?)

The wine they remembered was necessarily light and lively, maybe 11 or 12
percent alcohol, Mr. Lynch suggested, to accompany the heavy, rich cuisine of
Lyon, the city that legendarily is situated at the confluence of three rivers:
the Rhône, the Saône and the Beaujolais.

It’s fair to say that though Mr. Lynch’s company, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant,
imports some of the best Beaujolais producers in the world, including Jean
Foillard and Domaine Lapierre, those wines bear little resemblance to the
Beaujolais of old, beyond being made entirely of the gamay grape.

It’s still possible to find refreshing Beaujolais on the simple end, or at
least wines that live in that same spirit. Lapierre makes a wine, Raisins
Gaulois, that carries the Vin de France appellation but comes from Beaujolais.
It’s juicy, fruity and pure, and I imagine it would be deliciously refreshing
with blood sausage, tripe and other essentials of cuisine lyonnaise. We
included it in our lesson on thirst-quenching wines.

Wines labeled simply “Beaujolais” would also fall into that bright,
lip-smacking territory, especially as good producers reclaim this appellation,
the lowest category in the Beaujolais hierarchy, underneath
Beaujolais-Villages and the Beaujolais crus, 10 appellations judged to have
the potential to yield superior gamay grapes.

They are, in order from north to south: St.-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas,
Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié, Brouilly and Côte de
Brouilly, a recitation that one reader, Paul Adams of Stony Brook, N.Y., said
always felt like a little poem.

Our focus for the last month has been on Fleurie, one of the two most popular
and easy-to-find crus in the United States along with Morgon, which we
explored in 2018. As always, I suggested three bottles to drink. They were:
Clos de la Roilette Fleurie Cuvée Tardive 2019 $29, Domaine Chapel Fleurie
Charbonnières Vieilles Vignes 2018 $37 and Jean-Louis Dutraive Fleurie Domaine
de la Grand’Cour Clos de la Grand’Cour 2019 $39.

As quite a few readers have pointed out, these are not inexpensive wines,
certainly not if they were the sort of jolly, casual bottles for which
Beaujolais has long been known.

Let’s be clear: I am not demeaning simple, delicious wines. I revere them and
always have a place for them. But cru Beaujolais are not those wines. They
offer more to taste and more to think about. Yet they are not solemn wines.
Good gamay wines, no matter how they are made or where they come from, always
seem to have an intrinsic element of joyousness.

While these three all come from Fleurie, they were nonetheless distinct. The
Cuvée Tardive from Clos de la Roilette comes from old vines, and generally
improves with a few years of aging. Yet even drinking it young, as we did, it
was fresh, expressive and calm, both fruity and floral with touches of citrus
and a chalky minerality, maybe even a touch of Mr. Olney’s green fruit, as in
greengage.

The Dutraive was strikingly different. It was flamboyant in its flavors, with
a pronounced floral quality that reminded me of violet pastilles. It also had
a touch of effervescence, perhaps because of additional carbon dioxide used to
protect the wine as Mr. Dutraive uses very little sulfur dioxide as a
preservative.

You’d expect the Chapel also to differ, as it comes from the weightier 2018
vintage while the other two were 2019s, a vintage in which the wines seem to
be brighter and fresher. True to the vintage, it was denser, more concentrated
and less energetic, yet also with an earthy, violet flavor that was both
pretty and intriguing.

I also got a slight cinnamon flavor on the Chapel, which I often associate
with semi-carbonic fermentation, a method historically common in Beaujolais in
which whole bunches of grapes are piled into vats. Those on the bottom are
crushed and begin to ferment, releasing carbon dioxide, which induces a
different, intercellular fermentation in the bunches on top.

Each of these producers uses that method, which has become more popular
elsewhere in the world even as more Beaujolais producers seem to be employing
more conventional methods of fermentation. The method does partly account for
the easygoing reputation of Beaujolais, as it often results in wines that are
immediately accessible. Yet as these wines demonstrate, it can do a lot more
than that.

I asked people whether they thought these wines were floral, as the wines of
Fleurie (which means flowery in French) are almost reflexively described that
way. I found the Dutraive and the Chapel particularly floral with their violet
flavors, less so the Roilette.

But I’d nonetheless be cautious about generalizing. A lot of wines, including
other Beaujolais crus, can be described as floral. I think in this case the
description speaks as much of an association with the name as it does an
indelible characteristic of Fleurie.

I also asked participants whether they thought these wines could age, because
the conventional wisdom is to drink Beaujolais young. As I recently enjoyed an
exceptional 2005 Morgon Delys from Daniel Bouland, I would say, of course
these wines can age. I would put away the Roilette and the Chapel without
hesitation, though I’d be more inclined to drink the Dutraive young. Peter of
Philadelphia, a reader who loved the Dutraive with boerewors, a South African
sausage, also did not see much potential for aging in the Dutraive.

Just because a wine can age does not necessarily mean it should be aged, as
several readers pointed out.

“Cru Beaujolais can and does age well,” wrote TLeaf of Seattle. “Whether it
will improve with tertiary flavors is another question.”

David from Warsaw wrote of the pleasure he recently took in a “pure and
bright” 1999 Morgon Côte du Py from Jean-Marc Burgaud.

As with any wine, when you drink it is a matter of taste. Cru Beaujolais just
so happens to be versatile enough to enjoy young and aged. The Clos de la
Roilette in particular, I think, will be even better in two or three years.
The Chapel will improve, too. But from then on, it’s a question of personal
preference.

Mike from Boston made an interesting point. “We’re starting to talk about
Beaujolais the way we talk about Burgundy,” he said, “and I’m not so sure
that’s for the best.”

I inferred he meant we are taking it more seriously, which implies we are
losing some of the casual fun of Beaujolais.

I understand what he means, but it does not have to be a problem. The more a
wine costs, the greater the expectations that arrive with it. Cru Beaujolais
can fulfill those expectations if not held back by preconceptions of what
Beaujolais ought to be.

At the same time, Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages often provide the
thirst-quenching pleasures that can be enjoyed uncritically.

The great thing about Beaujolais is that you can have it many different ways
because it’s not just one type of wine.

[OrlandoRobert]

Roilette is one of the top ten holdings in my cellar. I buy it every year. One of the most consistent, high quality, age-able wines made in the world. A true vin de garde and under $30 USD, just silly to see. The Griffe du Marquis cuvee is another step up from the base cuvee and Cuvee Tardive, but all three are worthy purchases.

[Musigny 151]

This is one wine Robert, that we will not agree on.. Beaujolais has got away with murder for years just because it is not a serious wine, but now it is beginning to be priced as one. Philip the Bold, a medieval Duke of Burgundy knew his onions or at least his grapes. He banned the cultivation of Gamay, calling it “a very bad and disloyal variety.”

I am sure they make much better wines now, but having gone through several large scale tastings, for me, they cannot and never will have the complexity and interest of a good basic Bourgogne.

[rthomaspaull]

I have usually enjoyed Morgon and Moulin -a-Vent, as well as Brouilly and Cote de Brouilly, and sometimes Fleurie,Julienas and Chenas; even Beaujolais-Villages from Drouhin or Jadot can be enjoyable for a reasonable price. Of course the yeqr matters. rthomaspaull