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Cheap but Good—Beaujolais

There are really three grapes in Burgundy, when you add in the red Gamay (Gah-MAY) used in Beaujolais. It’s one of Burgundy’s most famous wines thanks to the notoriety of Beaujolais Nouveau. And every November you see, riding the coattails of the nouveau hype, a raft of imitators, notably Gamay nouveau from American and French wineries, and Italian novello wines (same word, different language). In that sense it is a paradigm, not as a wine style but as a business model. A wine that gets picked, processed, and sold within about three weeks, start to finish, adds up to serious cash flow. As they say, it ages on the boat.

You can have fun with Beaujolais Nouveau, but don’t skip the real stuff. Beaujolais is one of the world’s few inexpensive wines that offers real character. Beaujolais’ signature is a juicy, grapey fruit scent and succulent texture. The smooth as silk feel gives it immediate appeal. You may also detect a slight bit of earthy “Frenchness” thrown in. It reminds me of raking leaves in the fall. You’ll notice that Beaujolais is much cheaper than Burgundy’s Pinot Noir reds. This is because the Gamay grape itself is easier to grow than Pinot Noir, and perhaps more to the point, there’s a lot more of it—Beaujolais represents about two-thirds of the total Burgundy volume.

There are three major appellation ranks in the region: Beaujolais, Beaujolais-Villages, and Beaujolais Cru, and the latter two are the best to buy. For the top level, Beaujolais Cru, the wine is named and labeled for one of ten specific crus (vineyard areas) given this official top rank. My favorites among them are Brouilly (Broo-YEE), Morgon (More-GOHN), Moulin-à-Vent (Moo-lan-ah-VAHNT), Fleurie (Fluh-REE), and Julienas (Jhoo-lee-yeh-NASS). Among the Beaujolais-Villages wines my favorites are Duboeuf (Duh-BUFF) flower label, Jadot, and Jaffelin (Jhah-FLAHN). And some of my favorite cru Beaujolais are Morgon from Dubeouf, Brouilly from the Château de la Chaize, and Moulin-à-Vent from either Jadot or Janodet.

Buy any cru Beaujolais or Beaujolais-Villages that you can find from the following producers: Michel Tête (TETT), Trenel (Truh-NELL), and Janodet (JHAH-no-day).

WINE TASTING

Burgundy

Now that you have a lifetime supply of Burgundy wines to choose from, it is time to taste and compare a few of them so that you become familiar with the different styles. I am presenting three separate tastings, each with a different purpose. The first tasting focuses on the values of Burgundy, from the Mâconnais, Beaujolais, and Côte Chalonnaise. The next two tastings feature wines from the classic regions, Chablis and the Côte d’Or. First, a white Burgundy tasting will let you compare the style of Chablis versus a white wine from the Côte de Beaune to see the difference, which is quite marked. Finally, a red Côte d’Or Burgundy tasting will compare two different vineyard rankings so that you can assess their quality and style differences firsthand.

Classic White Burgundies

It is ironic that the classic French wine name Chablis was the one lifted by America’s jug wine producers, when you consider that most Chardonnays made these days emulate the other classic Burgundy white wine style from the Côte de Beaune. Its famous wines—Corton-Charlemagne, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Chassagne-Montrachet—are all in the barrel-fermented and-aged style so widely copied the world over. Now you will be able to see, in the case of Chablis, what the real thing is; and in the case of the Côte de Beaune whites, the world benchmark for Chardonnay today. You owe it to yourself to compare these two wine styles just to taste where that powerful influence came from. In my Complete Wine Course DVD, I take this tasting a step further, to include both a California and an Australian Chardonnay modeled after this style.

Classic Red Burgundies

Here we will compare a village-ranked Côte de Nuits red to a premier cru– or grand cru–ranked wine, so that you can see how they