2003 Jean-Claude Lapalu Brouilly Croix des Rameaux

Community Tasting Notes (3) Avg Score: 88.5 points

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View skoppel's profile
  • Report Issue

  10/23/2011 - skoppel wrote: 91 Points

  This bottle was great. Solid, substantial, a much better showing than last year. Cherries are the dominant flavor, but more like a chocolate cherry filled bon-bon, with a little bit of rhone-like barnyard thrown in to give it some grounding. Nice long finish, if you have this drink up, but it should last a few more years easily.

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View skoppel's profile
  • Report Issue

  4/28/2010 - skoppel wrote: 86 Points

  This wine proves you can't teach a pig to sing. Gamay just doesn't have the legs to age well. The wine was fine, but unspectacular. Given that I paid twice as much as a normal Beaujalois ( and in an awesome year to boot) I would have expected more. Moral of the story, stay young on the beaj,don't expect more than what it is, and remember the wine guy sometimes is just trying to move product.

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View jrufusj's profile
  • Report Issue

  2/10/2006 - jrufusj wrote:

  Small Carnival Gathering (At Home): Schizophrenia... That's the only way I know to describe my reaction to this wine. It has a nice deep purplish red color that is bright at the same time. The nose shows just a bit of new oak vanilla sweetness that also comes out on the palate as a certain (baby Dujac-like) silkiness and an occasionally cloying candy note. There are really two strains of fruit: a typical Brouilly bright red berry with almost peachy acidity and also a very Moulin-a-Vent like deep plummy fruit that even threatens to hint at chocolate. It is surprisingly dense and reasonably persistent on the finish. The alcohol is occasionally a tad hot, but gives the wine a certain sweetness and body that makes it seem bigger than it is. If I rated wine on some absolute scale, I would probably have to rate this higher than most Beaujolais that I am happier drinking. It really does have all the pieces in that way. Yet, somehow, it just shows a bit too much of the effort to move north to the Côte d'Or and bit too much of the vintage. Ease up on the new oak (or whatever gave the sweet nose) and tone down the ripeness and the dark fruit a bit and this would be a headline stunner of a cru Beaujolais. As it is, it is almost there. But I feel a bit like I'm buying some kind of pirated good in a back alley in Beijing. If I'd wanted a pinot from the Côte d'Or, I would have bought a basic bourgogne from Geantet-Pansiot or Lafarge. Those were available for about the same money. I wanted to buy a Beaujolais (and a lighter, brighter wine like the Brouilly it claims to be).

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

Professional reviews have copyrights and you can view them here for your personal use only as private content. To view pro reviews you must either subscribe to a pre-integrated publication or manually enter reviews below. Learn more.