2011 Château Thivin Côte de Brouilly- France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Côte de Brouilly (8/24/2013)
Can a wine be too delicious? This sure seems to be. On opening it was exploding with red fruit and backed by minerals. Supple but not flabby, each sip brought me back for the next. Over the course of 3 hours it developed savory elements that added complexity and took the wine from merely delicious (a worthy goal) and added interesting to the mix. All fhis for $20? Sign me up for a whole lot more.
Have you tried the Chanrion CdB as well? I have not, but with the order you just nudged me to place, I tossed in a couple Chanrions to round out a case.
Had the '09 tonight and even after four-five hours it was still showing overripe purple fruit characteristics. Possibly a ad bottle so will have to resist a couple.
I had a 2010 on a restaurant list. Freaking delicious. I am starting to really love Beaujolais, although try as I might, my wife takes a sip and says “tastes like dirt, yuck.” Oh well…
I do not think that the 2011 Thivin “transcends the medium”. It’s more traditional gamay then say the '09 version was. If you do not like Beaujolais you probably won’t be thrilled, but then again, it’s only a $22 experiment. Cheers.
Depends on your understanding of Beaujolais. If you think of the region and think “nouveau” and “Duboeuf,” the 11 Thivin transcends that. I like the wine a lot, but I also like Gamay from the Loire and elsewhere…
Thanks for the note. I just obtained 4 of the 11s this week. I had a 2010 about ten days ago and it was wonderful. I have some 09s as well and based on Nates thread, I’m glad I pulled the 2010 rather than the 09.
A couple of posts from Gilman on the various '09 Thivin threads from last year:
Claude Geoffray, proprietor of Chateau Thivin thinks the 2009 is one of the all-time classics of his career- he ranks it right up there with 1989 as one of the finest vintages he has witnessed at the property. My heart lies with the more svelte, and tightly-knit style of the 2005 over the 2009 right now, but who am I to disagree with the man responsible for the wines for all these years! I just opened my second bottle of the 2005 out of my case (first one opened two years ago and the wine was still hermetically sealed) this summer and it was just starting to blossom structurally, but was still a tad on the monolithic side and begging for a few more years to emerge from that nexus of black cherry and sweet cranberry and start to show its soil component front and center. The oldest I have had in the last couple of years was the 1988- just gorgeous, with the fruit having transformed to a sweet blackberry, and notes of leather, bitter chocolate, herb tones and that great base of volcanic soil adding to a smoky smorgasbord of Thivin complexity. The wine was right at its apogee at age thirty-plus, so I am going to be patient with my 2005s and 2009s and see what the future holds. Maybe we can talk Monsieur Geoffray into releasing a few “vertical tasting” cases to show how well his wines age!
While the Thivins’ Cote de Brouilly bottlings generally arrive at a good point of drinkability around age seven or eight, one can certainly be rewarded for waiting a bit longer on the wines. At this stage (age 7 or 8) the structure tends to peel back nicely and offer up plump fruit and very classy transparency, but I really like them substantially older. Fifteen to wenty years of age in a top vintage is really a special place for these wines, as they seem to grow exponentially in complexity from about age twelve onwards. The 1989 a couple of years back was just stunning, with all of its sappy, blackberry fruit stil intact, but all sorts of other, savory elements swirling around the pure fruit and the great base of stony soil tones. It is my guess that the Geoffrays drink their Cote de Brouilly bottlings primarily around the 20 year mark, and tend to opt for their very, very serious straight Brouilly bottling when the cuisine calls for a younger wine. I have been trying to learn from their example and still have not touched my 2005s or any subsequent vintages, as my gut instinct suggests that there are a lot more fireworks to come from these vintages if one can just keep from pulling corks on them now. For the record, Claude Geoffray prefers his 2009 to his 2005, as he thinks the '09 is one of the greatest vintages of his illustrious career. On the other hand, I have a slight preference for the rock solid purity of the 2005, so this is the vintage that I loaded up on in comparison to the other recent vintages at Thivin. But, the 2010 is no slouch and a superb follow-up to the 2009- not as voluptuous at the core, but laser-like in its precision of fruit expression and chiselled soil tones- it will be a simply beautiful wine at age ten or twenty.
I echo Robert’s take on this outstanding wine. A first-ballot QPR hall-of-famer, year in and year out. I feel Thivin excels at expressing real structure and depth of fruit without sacrificing the juiciness and gulpability that makes Beaujolais what it is. This was especially the case in '09, when I felt many Bojos buried their minerality and earthy charms under layers of fruit. Whereas, with the 2009 CdB, Thivin managed to balance richness of fruit with ample structure and near-tactile minerality in what was my personal favorite wine of the vintage. The '11 is no slouch either, showing loads of structure and ageability (while still being completely delicious now) in what some folks consider an “early drinking” vintage (but which I think overall is a stronger vintage than either '10 or '09).
Foillard, Lapierre, and Metras rightly deserve their place in the top tier, but the way Thivin is consistently rocking it, I think it’s in the same elite company.