Psst. Come in a little closer, we want to share a secret. You know how you’re always asking us what the great value wines are? Not the $6 bottle that tastes as cheap as it costs – innocuously passing through your mouth leaving barely a hint of its presence - but the $11 bottle that could easily be mistaken for a wine brought out on a special occasion. Well, we believe we’ve found one and it showed up in the most unexpected place.
Perhaps the last corner you would expect to find “good value” wines is in France. France seems to conjure up images of the great first growths of Bordeaux, the fine reds and whites of Burgundy or the hard-to-find gems in Northern Rhone. Of course, there are great values in every area – say the vin de pays in the Languedoc or the wines of Chinon in the Loire valley – but they tend to be more elusive and require a degree of knowledge of the producer or the village. And to further complicate matters, you would not expect this good buy to come from Beaujolais, a region in Burgundy that tends to get its 15 minutes of fame in November during the Beaujolais Nouveau celebration and then quickly fades into the background. When we thought of Beaujolais, we quickly dismissed them as cheap – pink or pale red wines lacking character and substance, certainly nothing that demanded your attention or represented a hint of value. Our near-sightedness almost caused us to overlook a great jewel of France. Luckily, a shift in our perspective helped us to see what we were missing.
The lush, green rolling hills in Beaujolais are densely planted with the Gamay grape. This grape, in the proper environment, judiciously pruned to control yields, can be gently coaxed to produce stunning wines. These are the wines that are quietly being produced in the shadow of the Beaujolais Nouveau spotlight – the great Beaujolais Crus.
We can feel your skepticism like it is our own – in fact it was. Even some of our most knowledgeable wine friends, such as the sommeliers at respected restaurants, tend to turn up their noses at Beaujolais. You can get them to talk about Puligny-Montrachet for hours but bring up Moulin A Vent, a prestigious Cru of Beaujolais, and they quickly change topics. It’s a shame because it was the 2003 Mommessin Moulin A Vent (around $13) that blew us away with an unexpected intensity of ripe blackberries, raspberries and violets to fill its firm structure. The flavors lingered in our mouth long enough to cause us to pause before taking the next sip. To say we were pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. But could this be a fluke? Just a stellar producer from a great Cru? We had to keep tasting.
