Jean Loron Chateau de Fleurie 2018
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Robert
Parker
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Deep ruby color with purple hints. Intense and complex nose. Obvious notes of blackcurrants and blackberries, progressively complemented by licorice and black chocolate. The mouth is rich and well balanced with silky tannins and a remarkable persistence.
Ideal pairings for this wine include tajine, beef lasagna, and cow's milk cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
From vines around an 18th-century chateau in the village of Fleurie, this wine is structured and packed with ripe fruit. It has that poise between perfumed fruit and tannins that marks this appellation. Drink this wine from 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Bursting with aromas of sweet cherries, raspberries and roses, the Maison Jean Loron has enjoyed considerable success with their 2018 Fleurie Château de Fleurie. Medium to full-bodied, layered and lively, with fine tannins, good concentration at the core and bright acids, it’s keenly priced and worth seeking out.
Other Vintages
2020-
Wine
Enthusiast -
James
Suckling
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Wine
Enthusiast
The story begins more than 300 years ago, with Jean Loron in the steep slopes of Beaujolais, in the heart of the village of Chenas. Unlike his parents who work various crops - including vines - like many farmers at the time, Jean decided to specialize in viticulture.
Located in an exceptional environment, the vineyards of the Beaujolais and Maconnais vineyards are endowed with a rich and complex geology, mixed with a meteorology with multiple influences. These two vineyards are located between Lyon and Beaune, in the southernmost part of Greater Burgundy. Beaujolais and Maconnais are ancestral vineyards where hills and valleys run for about fifty kilometers each, with the foothills of the Massif Central in the west and the plain of the Saône in the east. Finally, ¾ of these vineyards are planted in Gamay Noir in Beaujolais, and in Chardonnay in Maconnais.
Delightfully playful, but also capable of impressive gravitas, Gamay is responsible for juicy, berry-packed wines. From Beaujolais, Gamay generally has three classes: Beaujolais Nouveau, a decidedly young, fruit-driven wine, Beaujolais Villages and Cru Beaujolais. The Villages and Crus are highly ranked grape growing communes whose wines are capable of improving with age whereas Nouveau, released two months after harvest, is intended for immediate consumption. Somm Secret—The ten different Crus have their own distinct personalities—Fleurie is delicate and floral, Côte de Brouilly is concentrated and elegant and Morgon is structured and age-worthy.
The bucolic region often identified as the southern part of Burgundy, Beaujolais actually doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the rest of the region in terms of climate, soil types and grape varieties. Beaujolais achieves its own identity with variations on style of one grape, Gamay.
Gamay was actually grown throughout all of Burgundy until 1395 when the Duke of Burgundy banished it south, making room for Pinot Noir to inhabit all of the “superior” hillsides of Burgundy proper. This was good news for Gamay as it produces a much better wine in the granitic soils of Beaujolais, compared with the limestone escarpments of the Côte d’Or.
Four styles of Beaujolais wines exist. The simplest, and one that has regrettably given the region a subpar reputation, is Beaujolais Nouveau. This is the Beaujolais wine that is made using carbonic maceration (a quick fermentation that results in sweet aromas) and is released on the third Thursday of November in the same year as harvest. It's meant to drink young and is flirty, fruity and fun. The rest of Beaujolais is where the serious wines are found. Aside from the wines simply labelled, Beaujolais, there are the Beaujolais-Villages wines, which must come from the hilly northern part of the region, and offer reasonable values with some gems among them. The superior sections are the cru vineyards coming from ten distinct communes: St-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Regnié, Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly. Any cru Beajolais will have its commune name prominent on the label.