not drinking poison in paris: yann bertrand's 1st beaujolais nouveau: "ptit bouchon"

17 November 2016

yann bertrand's 1st beaujolais nouveau: "ptit bouchon"

Yann Bertrand with his demi-muid's of Beaujolais primeur

Fleurie's Yann Bertrand made a Beaujolais Nouveau this year from fruit purchased from Charentay vigneron Romain Jambon. It's stellar - a long, 16-day maceration yielded a sinuous, impossibly bright wine, with vigorous raspberry fruit. The quantity is minuscule, something like 2600 bottles.

What makes the wine groundbreaking is Bertrand's decision not to filter it. He rightly figured that, given the tiny production, his primeur would be drunk in Fleurie, in Lyon, and at furthest, Paris. Little would be risked by avoiding filtration. For good measure, he took the unusual step putting the primeur in demi-muid for two weeks before bottling, so that the wine could clarify itself more quickly than it would have in tank.

Almost no one releases unfiltered Beaujolais Nouveau. Off the top of my head, I can think of only Max Breton* and Romain des Grottes**, both of whose unfiltered primeurs are, incidentally, terrific. (Oh! And Marcel Joubert.)

There might be a few others who don't filter their Beaujolais Nouveau. But the overwhelming majority of otherwise #nofilter natural winemakers filter their primeurs, because the greatest demand is in the overseas market, and winemakers are reluctant to risk shipping such young, troubled wine without the stabilization of filtration. (Max Breton and Jean Foillard, both of whose primeur production is significantly bigger than Bertrand's, both laudably declined to sell primeur to Japan this year, saying the late harvest date made it impossible to have the wine done in time for shipment to the far east.)

A Beaujolais Nouveau display at a 7-Eleven in Tokyo, Nov. 2015.

Filtration has the same effect on a young wine as it does on a more mature wine: the wine is lightened, polished, stabilized, stripped of its grain, effectively neutered.

I still like the filtered primeurs well enough and will surely drink several bottles' worth tonight. But I strongly believe that the tradition of Beaujolais Nouveau could be rehabilitated - improved, even - if more winemakers were to make non-export cuvées like Bertrand's.

We, ahem, sampled a magnum of Breton's Beaujolais Nouveau at l'Auberge du Col du Truges last Sunday.

If you want to see the Aurora Borealis, you don't search YouTube in a living room in Hackensack; you head to Norway or Iceland or Finland. If you want to taste true unfiltered Beaujolais Nouveau, visit France.

The just-pressed juice of Max Breton's Beaujolais Nouveau, Sept. 2015.

This year's selection of unfiltered Beaujolais primeurs at YARD Restaurant, Paris.

* Breton is sort of the North Star of Beaujolais Nouveau. His is the benchmark against which many winemakers measure their success in primeur vinification.

** This is slightly misleading, because Romain des Grottes doesn't actually make a special primeur cuvée. His entire production, classed as Vin de France, sees zero élévage and early release, meaning it's effectively a Beaujolais Nouveau, but not legally.

1 comment:

Joel18 November, 2016 14:36
The domaine botheland nouveau has a fair chunk of sediment in it - would that just be a light filtration?
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment