Appellation: Fleurie
Cuvée: Vendanges Tardives
Colour: Red
Grapes: Gamay
About: Note this isn’t a late-harvested Cuvée, as the name might suggest – but specifically doesn’t say Vendanges Tardives. It’s a wine from the oldest vines of the estate, at least 80 years old, made to show the potential of great Beaujolais to age in bottle, to give much pleasure later, say around 10 to 15 years. Yes, it can also be drunk young with almost equal pleasure. Winemaking is same as the classic Cuvée.
Vines
Location: Roilette, down the hill east from Fleurie village.
Size: 9 ha
Age: Planted in 1940
Soils: granite with 25% clay
Exposition: east and north east
Altitude: 250m
Training: gobelet
Farming: basically organic
Average yield hl/ha: 30
Climate: continental, usually cold winters, warm, sometimes hot summers but who knows these days.
Winemaking
Ferments in concrete tank, using whole bunches, natural yeasts, by classic semi-carbonic maceration, without sulfur. On skins for 15 days, then pressed and returned to concrete tank to finish then moved to foudre to age for 9 months. A gram of sulfur may be added after the malo and a gram at bottling otherwise none. The wine is lightly filtered because it’s bottled too early to have fallen naturally clear.
Vintage Notes 2020
Date harvested: 24 august to 6 sept (normally mid September)
Yield hl/ha: 30
Date bottled: 2021-05
Bottles produced: 10,000
Alcohol %: 14.5
SO2 Total: 50
Tasting:
2021-05-18
Fab very rich, dark, but more plump than the classic
2021-11-18
superb, more mineral, skeletal, much finer, more Burgundy, cherry, cassis, floral, some smokey, some sous-bois, great structure.
Vintage Notes 2021
Date harvested: 24 august to 6 sept (normally mid September,
Yield hl/ha: 40
Date bottled:
Bottles produced:
Alcohol %: 12.8
SO2 Total:
Tasting:
2021-11-18
more smokey, bacon, mineral, fig, dried cassis, dense, racy acidity, in 50 year old foudre, excellent…