Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
A very pleasing even red colour, the fruit swarms smoothly over the granite structure, this is gorgeous with a svelte yet profound covering of strawberry over the bones. Accessible early but with some extra keeping qualities. Drink from 2026-2030.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Fleurie Joie de Palais comes from a very steep slope with a 40% to 50% grade, worked exclusively by hand or horse. The wine opens with broad shoulders to reveal a lush concentration of flavors—stewed berries, plums, sweet soil, thyme and spice. The wine gains precision along the palate with its lining of fine-grained tannins that taper the fruit while simultaneously allowing its layered mid-palate to unfold. This is an elegant wine, one that needs a few years in bottle to reveal its finest.
Rating: 91+ -
Vinous
The 2023 Fleurie Joie du Palais, lying in pink granite soils, showed a little more reduction on the nose with blackberry, raspberry and Morello cherries. The palate is medium-bodied, fleshy and ripe with silky tannins and a slight confit finish. Delightful.
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.