Our last stop on the Beaujolais tour was the northernmost wine village in the appellation. It's called Juliénas (pop. 895), and to get there from Moulin-à-Vent you drive around a mountain, go fairly high up, and then drop down into a deep valley. The views along the way are nice.
In the World Atlas of Wine, I read that the wine of the Juliénas cru is more like the wine of Fleurie than that of Moulin-à-Vent. It's "Fleurie-like in youth, but at best fatter, fleshier, and spicier with the backbone to keep it going for five years." In other words, you can keep a bottle for five years with confidence that the wine will continue to improve.
"Juliénas is steep, ideally sheltered, and drained. No cru has a higher overall standard." That's from the same paragraph as the sentence above. In his earlier wine "encyclopedia" the same author says that Juliénas is considered to be "mealtime Beaujolais" rather than simply a thirst-quenching wine like many other Beaujolais vintages. And, I'll add, there's a big wine co-op in Juliénas that was open for business by the time we got there that afternoon.
Attractive village. So you did buy more wine. ;-) Looking forward to pictures. Thanks to yesterday's spam, I learned two new words: grossesse and cible.
ReplyDeleteHi D.,
DeleteIn my youth, abortion was simply known in France as avortement, but because of the bad connotation of that word, some people in the late 20th century found this so much more elegant expression, interruption volontaire de grossesse, better known as IVG, which doesn't sound as bad and is no longer unlawful. Same euphemism as pro-choice in English, I guess.
Pro-choice is the term of choice because, activists will tell you, nobody is really pro-abortion. IVG and avortement — I'm not sure what the distinction is except as you say. It's kind of like the difference between execution and capital punishment.
DeleteThanks you two. When the background is explained the words are easier to remember.
DeleteWe knew that there was a wine co-op with a shop and tasting room at Juliénas. So we planned that stop in advance.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you chose this path to Juliénas. This photo is a feast for my eyes and I know you and Walt enjoyed seeing this pretty place.
ReplyDeleteAre those wintering-over vines on the hillside behind the church? At first glance, I thought it was a flock of white birds, landed.
ReplyDeleteThose are vineyard plots where new vines have recently been planted. A certain number of vines die off every year, and new ones are periodically planted to replace them. Each tender new shoot put in the ground is protected by a plastic sleeve until it really takes hold and is less vulnerable to pests. Some growers use plastic mineral water bottles with the bottoms and tops cut off off. More and more these days they seem to be using the white plastic sleeves.
Delete