Jean Paul Brun Domaine des Terres Dorées Beaujolais "L'Ancien" Vieilles Vignes Nouveau 2022

Alcohol: 12.5%

Grape(s): Gamay

Localization: Beaujolais, Burgundy, France

Tasting Notes: This vintage is sensational, just insanely delicious with lovely aromas of very ripe red currant and blackberry, with violet, plum skin and herbal notes. The palate is velvety and lush but with nice brightness, with very deep red and black fruit liqueur, a bit of bitter chocolate and earth with a nice kick of acidity that keeps it fresh in the finish.

Notes: The Terres Dorées L'Ancien vines are Jean Paul's oldest vines at 40-60 years old. They grow on the sandy clay-limestone hills in his home village of Charnay in the southern Beaujolais and yield small, thick-skinned berries. The farming is organic and harvest manual. The earliest harvest of these vines goes into his Nouveau. Unlike any other Nouveau out there, there is no carbonic maceration (true for all of his Gamays). The bunches are destemmed, the fruit crushed and fermented with native yeasts in tank, notably with no chaptalization; it is aged briefly, though longer than most Nouveaux, and bottled in time to land in the states by December. 

The Domain: Jean-Paul Brun started Terres Dorées in 1979 with a mere 4 hectares of vines in Charnay in the southern Beaujolais, an area which is slightly warmer and more limestone-driven versus the more renowned granite-rich cru villages in the northern Beaujolais. Today, the Charnay estate is around 30 acres, but with an additional 15 hectares farmed in the crus. The farming in Charnay is organic and includes working of the soils; the cru parcels are farmed sustainably and the soils are not worked. Harvest is by hand and of well-ripened but not over-ripened fruit, so alcohol levels are generally modest. Annual Terres Dorées production is around 350,000 bottles, 85-90% of it from estate fruit with the rest of it sourced. From the beginning, Jean-Paul carved a different path for himself in Beaujolais. Not only does he not chaptalize (a common practice here), he has also always eschewed the relatively modern technique of carbonic maceration, in favor of traditional Burgundian vinification. His feeling was and remains that the character of Gamay and its varied terroirs is obscured by whole-cluster fermentation, as well as by the use of commercial yeasts and copious sulfur. He has never strayed from that philosophy, continuing to carefully sort and destem his grapes; add no yeast; add no sulfur (until a touch at bottling); allow for several weeks’ maceration; do regular pigeage or punch-downs; and age in a combination of concrete and old oak, varying with vintage and wine. Jean-Paul is not an adherent or advocate of “natural wine” per se, yet is among the most natural of Beaujolais vignerons, uninterested in trend or fashion but deeply committed to the purity of expression of fruit and site. The individuality of those expressions--the fact that each is a different wine from all of the others--is intentionally emphasized by his choice to label every one of his many bottlings with a completely different label.