CLOS DE LA BROSSE
Saint Amour, Beaujolais, France
The four-acre walled Clos de la Brosse is a top site with low yielding 90-year-old vines. The most northern Beaujolais cru, Saint-Amour has complex soils of granite, clay, schist and limestone. Gerard Lebeaupin lets the terroir do the talking. Plum-ruby in the glass, the wine fills the bowl with scents of violets, cherries, minerals and spice. It fuses chewy blackberry fruit, plentiful fine tannins, and expressions of stony minerals, herbs, brown spices, and violet petals. This is serious wine from a cru that is too often overlooked.
Gerard is old-school, vinifying in wooden tanks not cement. He uses a grill on top to keep the cap submerged, for a gentle extraction. Ageing is in very large oak barrels.
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