Beaujolais
by Tom Wolf
I don’t know about you, but whenever my favorite bands or musicians appear on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, I can’t resist watching. The physical constraints of the office space force them to reimagine their songs, but what the musicians sacrifice in technological oomph, they add back in other creative ways. For example, while Bad Bunny’s studio and Super Bowl renditions of “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR” feature pulsing synths and digital snare drums, his Tiny Desk performance swaps these out for a piano, acoustic guitars, and bongos—the kind of instruments you’d picture him playing with friends in an intimate backyard party in Puerto Rico.
You might think of the 2024 vintage as the Beaujolais’ Tiny Desk Concert rather than its Super Bowl. These wines might not overpower you with the amps, light shows, and special effects of other recent, solar vintages, but they can still dazzle and charm you in other creative, elegant, and intimate ways.
2024 Beaujolais
France | Beaujolais
As much as we love the crus of Beaujolais, like the two below, exceptionally well-made regional reds can also deliver wonderful expressions of Gamay. And no one produces finer AOC Beaujolais than Ghislaine and Stéphane Dupeuble. Delicate, lithe, and floral, this red is brimming with bright aromas of cranberries, pomegranate, and turned earth, and is a great candidate for your next picnic.
2024 Moulin-à-Vent “Vieilles Vignes”
France | Beaujolais
In a wine landscape in which producers bottle increasingly wider ranges of cuvées, Domaine Diochon has become an outlier, producing one bottling year in and year out, which happens to be the same bottling we have imported for nearly forty years: the old-vine Moulin-à-Vent. In our November 1984 newsletter, Kermit wrote, “There was only one cask of old vines and Diochon was going to blend it in to add substance and character to his other casks. I had to pay a premium to obtain that one cask pure and unblended.”
Today, the wine is made from vines planted in 1920, 1950, and the 1960s. Not much else has changed with respect to this rouge that hails from Moulin-à-Vent, the Beaujolais cru known for producing arguably the region’s most age-worthy wines. Bernard Diochon, who succeeded his father in 1967, once said, “I like tannic wines without heaviness; with fruit and floral aromas. I don’t like weighty wines with hard tannins.” Although Bernard has been succeeded by Thomas Patenôtre, the wine continues to remain true to that sentiment. It contains some tannin—it wouldn’t be young Moulin-à-Vent if it didn’t—but it is beautifully integrated and the wine is ready to drink now if given a little time to breathe. Soulful and savory, with notes of cherries, iron, and smoke, this is cru Beaujolais built to last.
2024 Morgon “Vieilles Vignes”
France | Beaujolais
While Guy Breton has proved he can make beautiful reds across many different crus, Villié-Morgon is his home, and this is his flagship cuvée. Eighty-year-old vines and sandy, high-elevation slopes give this Gamay a lot of depth, but even so, in 2024, the prevailing character is ethereal and racy, with zesty orange and bright cherry fruit. A bottle for the barbecue ice bucket!