Leaving Beaujolais for the South

The south is getting closer, I can feel it. Many of the houses are roofed with Roman tiles, curved and brittle, not flat industrial ones. It is windy and stormy. The weather here can be chaotic, just as it is further towards the Mediterranean.

The soils no longer come from gentle, warm sandstone, but from hard and cold granite and basalt. It is poor soil, good for vines and little else. This steep country, and the old gamay vines that cover it, are also hard to work. Since the collapse in the market for Beaujolais nouveau and the bad reputation it has given the area, wine from here has become difficult to sell. I expected quite thin wines that are harsh in their youth, but have discovered some generous and powerful ones.

Wine here comes as simple Beaujolais and as Beaujolais villages. it can also come from one of the 10 crus in the Beaujolais. It can have the parcel or “climat” on the label, or a “cuvee” of old vines etc

Nothing is ever simple in France!

Laurent Martray, vigneron, with the Hill at Brouilly in the background.

And hard at work, despite the storm forming in the valley.

Vines on the Cotes de Brouilly. This is poor, gravelly soil with lots of blue basalt stones.