The trick with aging Beaujolais is not to drink it young. 
Even among the AFWE for lack of a better term, including many friends, they don’t let their Beaujolais age. Or don’t want to.
Should we create a poll? Who has aged Beaujolais more than 20 years after vintage? My oldest are just getting there personally, and I think 1999 was the first vintage I bought with the purpose of aging.
I am a fan of Eric’s wines and have long wanted to meet him. I need to get my colleague Luis to introduce us.
Yeah, and I don’t get the impression that importers of older wines are especially seeking it out. Kinda surprised that someone like Mannie Berk hasn’t made a push with it (or perhaps he did, and I just missed it). In the last month, I bought a bunch of '71s and '64s with pricing in the 20-35 EUR per bottle range here in France, and the most I have ever spent on a bottle of Beaujolais was something like 120 EUR for a 1945 Fleurie. That level of affordability is just not attainable with old reds from the Côte de Nuits.
Well, in all fairness, like Kabinett, they are so ridiculously good young and with just a few years, that I cannot keep my grubby paws off them. I think the oldest in my holdings is 2005 and 07. Sheez, even 2017 is drinking gorgeously right now. I have had some sublime ones with 30+ years on them from Bern’s, and they were dirt cheap. Will be there Sunday but with the wrong crowd for mature Beaujolais.
I don’t recall seeing a Beaujolais offer like that in the US, but maybe David Lillie/Chambers has and I am just not aware.
I think CSW had an offer for 1998 Chamonard. It may be hard to source older Beaujolais in volume for import.
They late release! Offering 1997s and 1999s at the moment along with newer vintages.
I never started aging them until 2009…but I’ve been lucky to have a few 96’s & 2000’s along the way. I don’t think it will be too long before the better producers are allocated and buying history may impact your ability to get what you want (or 1/3 of what you used to).
Do you think the demand is that close to outstripping the supply? I would think if anything the prices will creep up first.
There are certainly some good values, but there is also the minefield of natural wine roulette that will put off plenty of consumers.
Clos de la roilette was easily available at the estate. Bouland on the other hand was not available for purchase at the estate. So I think you are right that it’s moving in that direction, but only a few estates are concerned.
I still have a little 1997, 1998, and 1999 Roilette Tardive and 1997s from Desvignes, Lapierre, Rochette, and Savoye. Almost all of these have been enjoyable over the past several years.
On this note, I was lucky enough to drink a bunch of Beaujolais from the 60s and 70s that my friends grandfather, who owned a restaurant/hotel in Divonne, had bottled himself! They were remarkably full of life in the 2000s.
In my market Roilette, Foillard, Dutraive and Lapierre are all allocated.
Descombes is readily available and I find that I like them more than most Foillard and Lapierre in a similar GoF way.
The two producers that everyone should be paying attention to for classically styled wines are Brun and Desvignes, IMO.
This, exactly. I love the exuberance of young Beaujolais.
Thanks Claus, I will check it out for sure.
lucien le moine released a series of 2015 cru bottlings called ‘horizon 50 ans’ …i guess he thinks they can take 50 years in bottle? i haven’t seen them for sale very often, let alone any notes but at pushing 200 euro a mag it seems overly expensive. interesting intent though…
Kabinett is even more ridiculously delicious mature (15-30 years old)
Nice! I’m always happy to see people disparage these wines so prices stay nice and low. I can even afford the top wines (and in multiples).
I don’t have much experience with Metras, but the style does concern me. I’m not a buyer. Foillard too. I seriously don’t understand all of the praise, and I have significantly more experience there. I strongly suspect a lot of people will be disappointed when they start opening old bottles of Foillard to find that some have not aged well at all (people will inevitably chime in to say they’ve had lots of great old Foillard, and I’ll guess now that many of those experiences were in Beaujolais – the supply chain is not kind to wines like this even when care is taken). Even Lapierre has had problems that I’ve found in quite a few bottles from '09 and '15 (I’m sure it’s no coincidence that these are ripe vintages). We had to return cases of '15 because microbial problems bad enough to start pushing corks. There are far worse worse producers whose names I have thankfully forgotten.