Gamay is verby, a grape of action. It does not sit still. Gamay leaps, tosses, turns, sparkles, winks, flirts, nudges, jitters, pesters, caresses, laughs, sticks its tongue in your ear. Drinking wine from gamay grapes jolts me out of the steady mechanical stupor that seems the toll we must pay to undergo daily living. Gamay-based wine is a slap and a spark.
Almost everyone who drinks wine drinks gamay without knowing it, when they drink Beaujolais Nouveau at Thanksgiving. However fun and frivolously fruity Nouveau can be, though, it has a sort of artificially constructed life, rather than the direct Zen thing-itself-ness of good gamay. This latter category, of course, is my subject today.
The province of Beaujolais bridges Burgundy and the Rhône. It is geologically and climatically distinct enough to be considered on its own, though wines from the area carry the imprint of both neighbors. You know about Beaujolais Nouveau. You may also know about the esteemed Beaujolais Crus: 10 appellations that produce splendid, easy-to-love and in some cases profound red wines from light to medium-dark.
Cru Beaujolais is a clever and compassionate sommelier’s secret weapon, because from good producers these wines can taste as purely delicious – and perform many of the same magical couplings with food – as good Burgundy, at far lower prices. Those prices are still somewhat high, however, for the sort of everyday drinking most of us do.
Is there something within easier reach that provides this crucial essence of gamay?
Thanks for asking. Yes, there is. Gamay seems almost intentionally designed to occupy that most sacred of middle grounds, where both usefulness and loveliness frolic.
Buy the Nouveau when you want to make your annual charitable contribution to our megacorporation overlords. Buy Cru when the moment calls for gorgeous. Buy – frequently – small-production, naturally made basic gamay when you want to live.
I really mean that. There’s something about gamay’s translucency, its ability to so directly, cleanly and guilelessly transmit its flavors, that it feels like a bulletin straight from life, a blank slate waiting for a message. In that way, I often think of it as the riesling of red-wine grapes: preternaturally sensitive, both literally and figuratively thin-skinned, communicative in the extreme, hiding nothing.
Because they represent their place of origin so well, there is tremendous variety of expression. The best for me is gamay from granite-based soils, which are prevalent in Beaujolais; these transmit a hard-edged prettiness that other terroir can’t duplicate. Gamay from denser soils with more sand or dirt transmit a more condensed, concentrated wine, and I love those too.
The risk of gamay is that its frank nature will readily disclose imperfections. The grape’s naturally high acidity, unchecked, makes for sour wines that talk too loud. Gamay grows profusely, too, so if yields are allowed to run too high, there’s simply not enough flavor to go around.
These factors are partially responsible for the traditional method for turning gamay into wine: carbonic maceration, where whole (undestemmed) grape clusters are put into anaerobic sealed tanks and ferment when the grapes on top crush the ones on the bottom, releasing carbon dioxide into the imprisoned fruit all around. This technique usually produces the fruity, untethered, candied style Beaujolais is best known for. (Some of the wines noted below undergo what’s called “semi-carbonic” maceration, whose technical attributes are too arcane for this space.)
Let’s try for something more rewarding than candy. What I look for in the glass is, first and foremost, the textural thumbprint of gamay: a raspy sort of tenacity, almost sandy, cohered to a juicy succulence. There is almost never noticeable tannin, so the beguiling textural contrasts all stem from the acidity. Everything remains above ground, out in the open. The flavors are usually in the berry family.
When the wine is good, it tips past the point of rasp, to raspberry; past sandiness to dusty grip; past acidity to tangy savor. Overall, we move from just-yummy to a-bit-more-than-yummy, a wine that can delight but also have something to say. Listen up.
Trenel Cuvée Rochebonne Beaujolais 2011, $16. This silky, beautifully balanced cuvée from chalk and clay soils is reminiscent of pinot noir, gamay’s neighbor in the region, and tastes as if it knew it had a nice night out ahead and dressed up appropriately. Once the bottle has been open a while, red fruit descends toward black cherry, and then tends toward deeper, lower-down flavors of roasted nightshade vegetables and licorice. Fresh and cordial, at a perfect 12.5 percent alcohol, with the faintest hint of rusticity (perhaps due to a hands-off vinification with no fining or filtering).
Domaine du Crêt de Bine Beaujolais 2011, $16. Another Beaujolais producer committed to minimal intervention, the Subrin family farms organically and employs biodynamic principles, strictly limiting yields from their average 40-year-old vines, which grow in granite soils in southern Beaujolais. The grapes ferment with yeasts native to the grapes and the vineyard: a rarity in Beaujolais, and a choice that imparts a freshness and suppleness that cultured yeasts cannot provide. After semi-carbonic maceration and maturation, only a scant 15 mg/liter of sulfur is added, and just at bottling.
And so, an amazing level of complexity. Two textures seem to be playing simultaneously, one on top of the other: that granitic grip underlying, a smoother, glassier layer above. The textbook refreshing acidity of gamay comes only at the end, a coda to the pure, shimmering cranberry and blackberry fruit.
Domaine Lattard Gamay 2012, $15. Drink this to know what gamay does when it’s slightly farther south and east of Beaujolais, in the warmer Rhône Valley. Luc and Denis Lattard farm organically, and add no sulfur to the wine, bequeathing a direct transmission from the soil.
Though it is vinified under full carbonic maceration, its intrinsically rustic homeland makes it much more than just-fruity. If you tend to like gamier, meatier, deeper reds but are intrigued enough to give gamay a shot, start here.
At first, the intense acidity sends an electronic shiver through one’s mouth, buoying cherry and raspberry tones. But midway, the wine goes deeper, getting brothy and even tongue-y on the finish. That hint of mammal is what sets the wine apart, melding the freshness of gamay with the forested muck of the more earthbound Rhône terroir.
Jean-Paul Dubost Beaujolais Villages 2013, $18. Another very small-production estate, Dubost farms in the crus of Brouilly, Moulin à Vent, Morgon and Regnié, which all contribute to this cuvée. Once again, the treatment is soft: indigenous yeasts for fermentation in concrete, no fining or filtering, aging in large neutral casks after 25 mg/L of sulfur added only at bottling; many of the plots are biodynamically farmed and the others are heading in that direction.
If you didn’t know this wine were gamay, you might guess syrah. It’s that herbal and reminiscent of smoked meat. The purple and black fruit flavors are plush, heading toward stewed instead of fresh. Bark and leaf elements make their way in. Play through the other gamays on this list as summer fades into fall, but once the thermometer dips under 50 or so for good, this elegant, structured gamay will warm your heart.
Joe Appel works at Rosemont Market. He can be reached at:
soulofwine.appel@gmail.com
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