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| Drinking Windows and Values |
| Community Tasting History |
| Community Tasting Notes (average 90 pts. and median of 90 pts. in 305 notes) - hiding notes with no text | | | Tasted by drwine2001 on 3/24/2024: Non-sulfured bottling. Light red. Licorice and soil. Light weight with just a bit of flesh. Faint dark cherry, very saline, but attenuated and short. (618 views) | | | Tasted by drwine2001 on 12/10/2023: Aged Cru Beaujolais (San Francisco): Non-sulfured bottling. Light red. Strawberry aromas. Light, limpid, gently sweet red fruit, and anise with some remaining tannin. Elegant, saline mouth feel. Seductive and ready. Beautiful bottle. (1195 views) | | | Tasted by YoRi on 10/27/2023 & rated 90 points: Mes attentes étaient élevées...
Robes amaranthe assez dense.
Nez discret, cerise et noix grillée.
En bouche, le vin a une belle tenue, sans aspérités, tanins arrondis, souple, saveurs de cerises mi-douces, la longue persistance suave traduit la qualité de l'ensemble. (794 views) | | | Tasted by maxmanx on 7/29/2023: Plenty of life left even on the 2nd day (but my last bottle). (959 views) | | | Tasted by PJohnsn on 5/8/2023 & rated 90 points: Lush, deep aroma and flavor (1167 views) | | | Tasted by maxmanx on 2/3/2023: I'm guessing at peak, but no rush. (1309 views) | | | Tasted by KVM on 12/8/2022: Medium red, not fading. This is maturing; clean, complex fruit, steely smooth tannin. (1302 views) | | | Tasted by maxmanx on 11/23/2022: Still fresh- which surprised me, and got better with a few hours in the decanter. Drink or hold. (1210 views) | | | Tasted by pbaek on 6/5/2022: Stunning right now. Understated, cool and vertical gamay with notes of game and earth, red fruit, orange peels. Tightly knit, vertical, good structure. Plenty of life left. Great wine, happy to have lot more in the cellar. (1553 views) | | | Tasted by pjhr on 2/10/2022 & rated 94 points: Delicious savory red cherry, earth, and mineral notes on the nose and refreshing palate with wonderful acidity on the long finish. Aging beautifully and showing it's roots in Burgundy! (1508 views) | | | Tasted by nzinkgraf on 10/31/2021: chrysanthemum notes. bitter, stem driven floral, that opens to more sweet violet palate. Needs time open to open even further.
Last little bit on day 2 is exceptionally charming. (1527 views) | | | Tasted by Vaucrains on 10/19/2021 & rated 95 points: I thought this was the best beaujolais I’ve had in 45 years of beauj-sipping. 11 years old, a lovely crystalline ruby with garnet edge, and then an absolutely beautiful, elegant perfumed nose of black cherry, earth, autumn leaf, fulfilled on the palate that is equally dancing and delicious- just pure crystalline beautiful focussed fruit. Blind, I would have guessed a really top grower Chambolle Musigny village, this wine is that deep, elegant and delicious. A revelation to me. I keep reading about- and hoping- to encounter a ”truly great gamay” and to me this wine is it. Really a wow. I’ve cellared and aged and drank all the top beaujolas producers over the past 20 years, and liked many of them- I like pure fruit, not oaky, relatively high fruit acid reds. But this is the first of many many beaujolais that really knocked my socks off. For instance, this Lapierre was miles better than Foillard’s 2010 Morgon that I also cellared and drank last week- a fading wine now beginning to madeirize, while this Lapierre 2010 is absolutely singing. A wine that perhaps has needed 10+ years to fully unfurl its various charms. Total yum. (1421 views) | | | Tasted by jjct on 9/29/2021: Very sappy, with sweet, pure fruit and enticing savory notes. In a great place, this is "oops I drank the whole bottle" good. (1432 views) | | | Tasted by drwine2001 on 8/26/2021: Unsulfured version. Dull red center, maturing edge. Faded strawberry, herbs, and just a bit of funk on the nose. Light, tangy red fruit, excellent acidity and stone. Can't ask much more of this natural wine at 11 years of age. (1657 views) | | | Tasted by Enfant sauvage on 6/28/2021: Similar experience to WineguyFL, I opened this and tried it and it was not good at all. At dinner an hour later (no decant), it was just okay. Next day, the remains of the bottle, much better. I drank a bunch of my Lapierres from the early 2010s thinking they were running out of time, but now I think they just might be in a bit of a dumb phase. Even at its best, I don't think this competes with drinking them early, but it wasn't bad. (1237 views) | | | Tasted by fred o. on 6/26/2021 & rated 91 points: backyard at E&BT: Dark violet.
Palate a bit wild, tannic. Black cherries. still seems young (591 views) | | | Tasted by isaacjamesbaker on 4/18/2021 & rated 93 points: Overdue tasting; 4/17/2021-4/18/2021: So good. Has a lot of musky, beefy, peppery, earthy tones yo accent the red fruit. Dusty and bright and complex, showing solid structure, too. I kept thinking while sniffing and tasting this: I want to bring a bottle of this camping, as it just evokes that feeling for me. (1684 views) | | | Tasted by Andydna on 3/11/2021 & rated 92 points: Delicious red fruit - raspberry and cranberry. Soil and graphite on the finish. (1557 views) | | | Tasted by tbriggs on 11/10/2020: Last of 4 bottles drunk between 2014 and 2020. balanced, good acidity, bright fruit, graphite. always a pleasure to drink. (1629 views) | | | Tasted by WineGuyFL on 9/21/2020 & rated 92 points: Last bottle. A good value. Word of advice........ I opened this bottle and decanted it for at least one and a half hours. I took a sip upon opening....and it was not good at all. Took another couple of sips along the way, and it improved. However, it took a full one and a half hours to get to what it should be. I do not recall if I had that experience in the past with prior bottles. (1605 views) | | | Tasted by drwine2001 on 8/12/2020: This was an unsulfured bottle. Light red. Red fruit scents. Light weight, supple. Mixed dull red fruits and berries with a touch of licorice, sandy soil underneath, and an alkaline finish. Wonderful stuff with perfect equipoise between lithe fruit and earthy complexity. (2218 views) | | | Tasted by tomlee on 7/14/2020 & rated 91 points: Light red in color. 13% ABV. Pretty nose of red fruits, crushed stones, rose petals and minerals. Medium body with perfect acidity. Elegant, fresh and earthy. Black cherry, strawberry, earth and spice on the palate. Exceptional length on the finish. Delightful Beaujolais that has aged gracefully. Best over the next 2-3 years. (1715 views) | | | Tasted by glou.sf on 6/28/2020 & rated 91 points: Red cherries, berries, and white pepper on the lovely, yet slightly muted nose. Great acidity with tart berries, blood orange, and a hint of cedar on the palate. Nice finish. Very nice wine overall, but I miss a bit of complexity I usually get from Lapierre's wines. Probably drinking at peak right now. (1586 views) | | | Tasted by ScottGoodwin on 3/27/2020 & rated 93 points: Might be my favorite bottle yet. Pure, fresh black cherries, mineral with crisp acidity and orange peel. All elements perfectly in balance. Texture is still silky soft. May not get any better but doesn’t seem to be about to fall off a cliff either. (1633 views) | | | Tasted by Saint Stephen on 3/21/2020 & rated 93 points: From magnum. So great over a weekend of self quarantining. I'm 100% here for the somewhat aged great Beaujolais. (1505 views) | | | Only displaying the 25 most recent notes - click to see all notes for this wine... |
| Marcel Lapierre Producer website
U.S. Importer (Addt'l Info)
Marcel Lapierre, Beaujolais Producer, Is Dead at 60
By ERIC ASIMOV
Published: October 11, 2010
Marcel Lapierre, a Beaujolais grower and producer who played a leading role in rejuvenating the diminished reputation of the region’s wines, died Sunday in Lyon, France. He was 60.
The cause of death was melanoma, said Kermit Lynch, the American importer of his wines. Mr. Lapierre was a rigorous, relentlessly experimental winemaker. He and a group of three other producers were instrumental in demonstrating to the world that Beaujolais had far more to offer than its often insipid mass-market nouveau wines.
Rather than these fruity, happy-go-lucky concoctions, Mr. Lapierre and his colleagues, Jean Foillard, Guy Breton and Jean-Paul Thévenet, produced wines of depth, nuance and purity that nonetheless retained the joyous nature of Beaujolais.
Mr. Lynch remembered the first time he tasted a Lapierre Morgon, from the 1989 vintage. “That bottle was so convincing to me,” he said on Monday. “He and his gang were so different from everything going on.”
Mr. Lynch long ago called Mr. Lapierre and his like-minded colleagues the Gang of Four. The name stuck, even as the loose group of friends came to include many more than four.
Mr. Lapierre was born April 17, 1950, into a country exhausted by two world wars. When salesmen appeared, offering new, labor-saving technologies, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, many vignerons did not require much convincing to cast aside the labor-intensive traditions of generations. The result was a sort of banalization of Beaujolais.
The problems for the region were eventually made worse by the growing popularity of Beaujolais nouveau. When Mr. Lapierre took over his family’s domain in Villié Morgon in 1973, the quaint harvest custom of making a new wine for immediate consumption was about to explode into a worldwide phenomenon. By the end of the 1970s, with the aid of aggressive promotion, cities from London to New York to Tokyo would be counting the minutes until the third Thursday of each November, the official release date, when wine shops could unveil the stored cache and proclaim, “Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé.”
The popularity of nouveau tilted the priorities of the region. As more and more Beaujolais production went into nouveau, growers no longer made a pretense of striving for quality. When the market for nouveau diminished, growers in the lesser regions of Beaujolais were stuck with an oversupply of poor wine, and the public was stuck with an image of vapid wine meant to be drunk immediately.
In the 1970s, Mr. Lapierre made his wines in the conventional manner of the times. But by 1981 he had come under the influence of Jules Chauvet, a Beaujolais wine dealer and scientist who advocated avoiding the use of chemicals as far as possible. Mr. Lapierre adopted organic viticulture, decided he would no longer add yeast to induce fermentation, and reduced or eliminated the amount of sulfur dioxide he would add to the wine.
Sulfur dioxide has been used as a preservative in wine for centuries, but can alter the experience of a wine, the way viewing a work of art through glass differs from a direct view. Used in excess, it can mask a range of sins, and many leading winemakers today try to use as little as possible. But to use no sulfur is risky and requires absolute rigor in shipping and storing the wines.
“It affects the very shape of the wine,” said Mr. Lynch, who does not buy wine without sulfur from any producer other than Mr. Lapierre. “The wine with no SO2 is very voluptuous and rounded. With SO2 it’s very squared-off to me.”
In recent years Mr. Lapierre’s son, Mathieu, had taken over winemaking duties for his father. Mr. Lapierre is also survived by his wife, Marie, and two daughters, Camille and Anne.
Why had he changed his methods in 1981?
“Because the wines I made didn’t satisfy me, and the wines from elsewhere that I liked weren’t made in the modern style,” he told the quarterly The Art of Eating in 2004.
“I’m just making the wine of my father and grandfather,” he said, “but I’m trying to make it a little better.”
GamayPlant RobezFrance Vins de France (Office National Interprofessionnel des Vins ) | Pages Vins, Directory of French Winegrowers | French Wine (Wikipedia)
Wine Scholar Guild vintage ratings
2018 vintage: "marked by a wet spring, a superb summer and a good harvest"
2019 vintage reports
2021: "From a general standpoint, whether for white, rosé or red wines, 2021 is a year marked by quality in the Rhône Valley Vineyards. Structured, elegant, fresh and fruity will be the main keywords for this new vintage."
2022 harvest: idealwine.info | wine-searcher.comBurgundy Les vins de Bourgogne (Bureau interprofessionnel des vins de Bourgogne) (and in English)
Burgundy - The province of eastern France, famous for its red wines produced from Pinot Noir and its whites produced from Chardonnay. (Small of amounts of Gamay and Aligoté are still grown, although these have to be labeled differently.) The most famous part of the region is known as the Cote d'Or (the Golden Slope). It is divided into the Cote de Beaune, south of the town of Beaune (famous principally for its whites), and the Cote de Nuits, North of Beaune (home of the most famous reds). In addition, the Cote Chalonnaise and the Maconnais are important wine growing regions, although historically a clear level (or more) below the Cote d'Or. Also included by some are the regions of Chablis and Auxerrois, farther north.
Burgundy Report | Les Grands Jours de Bourgogne - na stejné téma od Heleny Baker
# 2013 Vintage Notes:
* "2013 is a vintage that 20 years ago would have been a disaster." - Will Lyons
* "low yields and highly variable reds, much better whites." - Bill Nanson
* "Virtually all wines were chaptalised, with a bit of sugar added before fermentation to increase the final alcohol level." - Jancis Robinson
# 2014 Vintage Notes:
"We have not had such splendid harvest weather for many years. This will ensure high quality (fragrant, classy and succulent are words already being used) across the board, up and down the hierarchy and well as consistently from south to north geographically apart from those vineyards ravaged by the hail at the end of June." - Clive Coates
# 2015 Vintage Notes:
"Low yields and warm weather allowed for ample ripeness, small berries and an early harvest. Quality is looking extremely fine, with some people whispering comparisons with the outstanding 2005 vintage. Acid levels in individual wines may be crucial." - Jancis Robinson
# 2017 Vintage Notes:
"Chablis suffered greatly from frost in 2017, resulting in very reduced volumes. As ever, the irony seems to be that what remains is very good quality, as it is in the Côte d’Or. Cooler nights across the region have resulted in higher-than-usual acidity, with good conditions throughout the harvest season allowing for ripe, healthy fruit." - Jancis Robinson
# 2018 Vintage Notes:
"The most successful region for red Burgundy in 2018 was the Côte de Beaune. The weather was ideal in this area, with just enough sunlight and rain to produce perfectly balanced wines naturally." - Vinfolio
Beaujolais Vins du Beaujolais (L’Union des Vignerons du Beaujolais)
The vineyards on weinlagen-info
Wine Scholar Guild Vintage Chart & Ratings
# 2009 Vintage Notes:
"There will be a lot of absolutely delicious Beaujolais to try in 2009, as it is indeed a very good, atypically ripe and opulent vintage for Beaujolais. As others here have mentioned, the Louis-Dressner and Kermit Lynch portfolios cover many of the very best estates (with an honorable mention for importer Weygandt-Metzler), and just choosing from their strip labels is a very good jumping off point. As a quick primer, the three best Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages producers that I regularly cross paths with are the aformentioned Jean-Paul Brun and his Domaine Terres Dorées, Pierre Chermette of Domaine du Vissoux and Domaine Dupeuble from the Kermit Lynch's portfolio. I also find the Beaujolais-Villages from Joseph Drouhin consistently excellent and very classic in style and like all of this firm's Beaujolais, a completely underrated source for very top drawer Crus and B-Villages.
Amongst the Cru Beaujolais, it is important to keep in mind(again as folks have mentioned already) that certain villages tend to produce much more structured wines, and this will be very evident in a powerful vintage like 2009. In general terms, the wines from Moulin-a-Vent, Morgon and Cote de Brouilly are going to demand a bit of bottle age to really start to drink well in 2009, and these may not be the best growers to focus on when tasting through the vintage to draw your own conclusions. But in these appellations, if you keep in mind that what you are tasting is likely going to need five years of bottle age to really blossom from these crus, you cannot go wrong with Kermit Lynch's "Gang of Five" producers- Thevenet, Lapierre, Foillard, Breton are four of the five- as well as Georges Descombes and Louis et Claude Desvignes from Louis-Dressner. I also like very much the Morgons made by Louis Jadot and Joseph Drouhin for the big houses, and Jean-Paul Brun also makes a very good example of Morgon.
In Moulin-a-Vent, Louis Jadot's Chateau des Jacques makes a very good range- though always structured when young- and Bernard Diochon is excellent year in and year out. Pierre Chermette also makes superb Moulin-a-Vent and the Drouhin version is consistently exceptional. In Cote de Brouilly, the two most exciting producers are Nicole Chanrion and Chateau Thivin (both represented by Kermit Lynch). The Chanrion is usually very accessible out of the blocks for this very stony terroir (it is an extinct volcano), while the Chateau Thivin bottlings demand time and are usually tight and structured when young. Better to try the delicious straight Brouilly from Chateau Thivin if you want to drink one of their wines out of the blocks, as that never demands patience and is lovely.
In the less structured Cru villages, wines I particularly like are the aformentioned Clos de la Roilette in Fleurie (they are the Chateau Yquem of the village- though their vines are right on the Moulin-a-Vent border and the wine used to be sold as Moulin-a-Vent before the AOC went into effect, so they are a bit more structured than most Fleuries), Cedric Chignard, Jean-Paul Brun and Pierre Chermette are all very, very good sources. Domaine Diochon in Moulin-a-Vent also makes a good Fleurie, as does Joseph Drouhin. In general these will be more floral, open and sappy bottles of Beaujolais out of the blocks and they will be delicious from the get-go.
In St. Amour, Domaine des Billards makes absolutely brilliant wines and is one of my favorite producers in all of Beaujolais. In Julienas, Michel Tete is the star producer, but I also like the Drouhin bottling from here very well indeed. There are many more outstanding bottlings to be found scattered thorughout the crus and I am sure that I am forgetting several worthy estates, but this at least will give you a good "to do" list to get started with the vintage. The only '09s I have tasted thus far are the Joseph Drouhin wines, which I tasted through in Beaune in March, and they are deep, sappy and beautifully soil-driven. If all the other top estates have made wines in this style, then this is indeed going to be a very special vintage for the region. But with the wines from Morgon and Moulin-a-Vent, you may do better trying a few bottles from either the 2006 or 2007 vintage if you can find them well-stored, as these are less structured vintages and both are beginning to really drink well from these villages." - John Gilman
# 2014 Vintage Notes:
"The 2014 vintage in Beaujolais is absolutely terrific and probably, along with 2011, the best vintage in the region since 2005. The region has had a bit of a rollercoaster ride in the last few years, with an absolutely phenomenal vintage in 2011 (particularly for those of us who like to age our Beaujolais for several years prior to serving), one of the most difficult growing seasons in recent memory in 2012, a good, solid classic vintage in 2013, and now, again, another truly outstanding vintage in 2014." - John Gilman
"2014 [...] vintage is a return to the mineral-cracked freshness and explosive low-alcohol red fruit the cru level wines of this region are famous for but have lacked since 2010/2011 (without the potentially hard/green/diffuse/underripe character found in many 2012/2013's)." - Jon Rimmerman
"the 2014s exhibit lively berry and floral character punctuated by zesty minerality. The wines are concentrated yet not heavy, and show good structure without coming off as outsized. Many producers I visited in June described the wines as a hybrid of the 2010s and 2011s, combining the structure of the earlier vintage and the fruit intensity of the latter. As such, the 2014s, as a group, are hugely appealing right now but I have no doubt that they will reward another three to five years of aging. Many of the brawniest 2014s have the material to see them through a decade or more of life but by that point they’ll have little resemblance to most peoples’ notion of Beaujolais, so I’d advise drinking almost all of the ‘14s before they hit their tenth birthday." - Josh Raynolds
# 2015 Vintage Notes:
"Vinification will not be straightforward and the 2015 vintage will be a reflection of the quality of the winemaker." - Jean Loron
"the wines have the potential to age and evolve beautifully" - Michael Apstein
# 2016 Vintage Notes:
"a harvest of soft, amply fruity wines, though without the depth and density of the outstanding 2015 harvest." - Wine Scholar Guild
# 2017 Vintage Notes:
"Trade body InterBeaujolais has said the 2018 harvest in the region will “go down in history as a legendary vintage” alongside the likes of 2017, 2015 and 2009." - Rupert Millar
#2018 Vintage Notes:
"The heatwave of July and August led growers to anticipate rich, high-alcohol wines akin to the excellent, but atypical, 2015s. However, probably due to the reserves of groundwater accumulated prior to June 20th, the 2018s are, as a rule, fresher, with slightly higher acidity and considerably lower alcohol than their counterparts from 2015. There is, nonetheless, an appealing fleshiness or rondeur to many 2018s, which suggests they won’t keep for as long as the more mineral 2017s – which are really hitting their stride now – but makes them highly seductive from the word go.
Another interesting theme, which we encountered in wines from various domaines across different crus, is a Cabernet Franc-like leafy character towards the back of the palate, which contributes an extra degree of freshness and buvabilité." Will Heslop Morgon The vineyards on weinlagen-info
With 1100 ha of vines, Morgon is the second largest Cru after Brouilly, producing wines that are only marginally less powerful than those of Moulin-à-Vent. Certainly Morgon’s are the firmest in the region, with a bouquet of great purity and compact Gamay fruit. Morgon needs more time than other Crus before it can be broached - normally 2-3 years for its most serious exponents – and develop its rich, savoury flavours which lead to a Pinot Noir-like maturity. The ‘Classico’ heart of the Morgon region is the Mont du Py, just south of the commune of Villié-Morgon. The finest wines almost exclusively come from its Côte de Py slope, whose aspect and rich schistous soil contribute to greater ripeness, and yield wines that are denser than anywhere else in the appellation. As you would expect from a region of this size the character and quality of Morgon can vary considerably, but the best are as good, and as sturdy and long-lived, as any other Beaujolais you will find. Recommended Producers: François Calot, Maurice Gaget, Louis-Claude Desvignes.
See also Morgon Details |
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