As the summer continues my thoughts turn to wine that is more refreshing and not so brutal on the palette. This is the time to drink white wine right? I’m gonna be honest with you, I get bored by white wine after so long so usually half way through the summer I find myself turning to alternative reds that are easy to enjoy. Not simple and boring, easy to enjoy. Right now in Arkansas the mercury is rising so high it has reached a point of almost cartoonish proportions where the top of the thermometer is about to explode from all the undue stress caused by ridiculously high temperatures. Sitting on the back porch in a sea of my own sweat, sipping on a brutally rustic Barolo is not my idea of a fun time. One could liken it to drinking coffee in a sauna.

So what do you do when your getting beat by the heat AND you’re a red wine fanatic? Beaujolais. And I’m not talking about your grandmother’s Beaujolais. The stuff with the bright colors and possibly a caricature of a French man in a beret riding a bicycle on the label. I mean the real stuff, made by people who take this wine very seriously. Unfortunately, the grape that makes Beaujolais, Gamay, has gotten a bad rap for years. In 1395 the Duke of Burgundy Philippe the Bold banned it’s growth within the region so that the “more elegant” pinot noir could be grown. Over the years gamay was literally pushed so far south that it’s only technically still in the region of Burgundy, in an area known as Beaujolais.

Gamay Noir is the primary red grape of Beaujolais. It gets it’s origins from Pinot Noir and Gouais, an ancient white grape. It ripens two weeks sooner than pinot and is far easier to cultivate. Pinot is known to be an evil bitch of a grape to grow but gamy is very resilient. It is thought to have originally appeared around the town of Gamay which is just south of Beaune. Eventually it suffered the fate mentioned earlier and was pushed south by the unappreciative to where it’s now grown in a region that shares a climate more similar to the Rhone than the rest of Burgundy. It’s also been known to pop up in the Loire Valley as well. For years there was a wine known as Napa Gamay but thanks to DNA testing we now know that wine is actually made from Valdeguie, a grape that hails from the Languedoc-Roussillion region of France. As of 2007 it became illegal for Cali gamay to call itself that. Truth in marketing folks. Something I just learned though is that there are some growers in Oregon experimenting with gamay. Oregon being, to me anyway, the premier pinot region in the states with climates and soils similar to those of Burgundy, it makes for a pretty exciting prospect.

Back to the matter at hand though. Beaujolais is made up of four appellations: Beaujolais, Beaujolais-Villages, Cru Beaujolais, and Beaujolais Blanc and Rose. To add to that we also have Beaujolais Nouveau. Nouveau isn’t the same as regular Beaujolais. The tradition of Nouveau began in the nineteenth century when wine makers would bottle their juice right after fermentation and send them down the Saone to be enjoyed in the bistros of Lyon to celebrate the year’s harvest. In 1937 the Beaujolais AOC was established and by it’s rules a Beaujolais could not be released before December 15. This was bad news for Nouveau which was typically ready by mid November. Georges Duboeuf, the Julio Gallo of France, was having none of that though and in the process of spreading this uninteresting wine throughout the world like a plague got the rules for Nouveau changed. All Nouveau is now released on the second Thursday in November to cries of “Le Beaujolais Est Arrivé!” . Duboeuf pushed Nouveau into the states in the 80’s where it gained wild popularity among many people.

For our purposes we really only need to focus on two of the four appellations. Beaujolais-Villages and Cru Beaujolais. I consider these the more serious of the Beaujolais. Gamy by its nature is a fruit forward, easy on the palette type grape. Vintners of these two appellations tend to age their wines in oak for around six months to give it a little more character and structure. The process smoothes out the high acidity the wine can have while adding a light creaminess. This isn’t oaking in the American sense where everything is oaked for huge amounts of time in barriques that have been toasted so that everything which roles off that Napa assembly line tastes more butterier than Paula Dean’s mashed potatoes. This is more of a subtle oaking. The end product is a wine with a nice refreshing level of acidity which has a smooth creaminess on the tongue. Perfect for heat stroke inducing Arkansas summers.

The best thing about Beaujolais is that it should be consumed at around 57-61° Fahrenheit. One of my personal favorites is Roussy de Sales Chateau de la Chaize Brouilly. Brouilly is a Cru Beaujolais. One of my favorite things is sipping on this wine after it’s sat in the fridge for ten minutes and watch the sun call it a day, allowing a miniscule change in temperature to befall the land. The availability of Beaujolais varies from state to state or you may be one of the lucky ones who can have wine sent to your house so experiment. I stick to this wine because it’s really the only serious Beaujolais available in my state. You can’t go that wrong with Cru Beaujolais or Beaujolais-Villages and the best of the best is no more than $ 30 a bottle so I highly recommend it to cure Mid-Summer Hot Day Blues.

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Kendall Jackson

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