Alice - a Beaujolais by Sébastien Gutty ($22)
Otherwise known as, "the only white wine that happens to be red."
TL;DR…
Drink more Beaujolais. We should all drink more Beaujolais.
Pro tip…
As should be standard practice, give this wine a few minutes to open up. Not saying you need to go buy a decanter and all that shit - nothing wrong if you do, though - but popping the cork 10-15 minutes before drinking and/or giving it a few swirls in your glass makes this bottle’s berries blast off.
For your information…
Producer: Sébastien Gutty
Country: France
Region: Beaujolais
Appellation/Sub-Region: Fleurie
Grapes: Gamay
Vineyard/Cellar Practices: Certified HVE (High Environmental Value), Hand-Harvested, Whole Bunche carbonic maceration for ten days
Color: Ruby Red
What I Tasted: Fresh blueberry juice, overripe strawberry, silky smooth
A quick assignment…
Before I bore you to death with stories of producers, French villages, and records (oh my), let me give you a quick assignment:
Go to your local bottle shop and ask an employee for their best bottle of Beaujolais between $20-25.
Buy that bottle.
Call a friend and ask them (nicely) to come over.
Enjoy said bottle with aforementioned friend.
**If you regret your purchase, I will literally might send you $20 to help cover the cost.
Some backstory…
Last week when up in Asheville, NC, for Plēb’s Acid on the River fest, I swung by Pink Moon - a heady wine bar hidden away behind a notorious Asheville dive/blues bar with a limited (normally about five available wines) but highly curated selection of natural wine, vermouth, and amaro. For those of you in/going to Asheville anytime soon, stop by Pink Moon. The bartenders are friendly, knowledgeable and will put you onto something you love.
After tasting through a Chilean orange wine, local fernet, and Brutes’ All the Feels - an unreal apple, pear grape, and quince cider from Sweden (p.s. all of these will likely reappear in future issues), the bartender recommended stepping over to another notorious Asheville dive bar, the Lazy Diamond and sneaking to the back where, surprisingly, there was yet another tucked away wine bar with a solid stock of our weekly bottle of Beaujolais.
So, after sneaking away from Pink Moon and tossing back a pizza from new-ish spot on a classic one-way downtown Asheville street (your guesses are welcome), Alice was calling, and the back room of Lazy Diamond is where she resided.
Now, before continuing, let do a quick dive into the shallow part of the pool on why I wanted to leave a great wine bar for this bottle of Beaujolais…
Beaujolais is a classically unpretentious French wine once described as "the only white wine that happens to be red" by author Karen MacNeil (The Wine Bible) - and let me tell you, folx, this Karen wouldn’t have a single bad thing to say about our bottle of Alice.
Much like a fine pilsner, a cold glass of iced tea, or a crisp white, Beaujolais is meant to be a light and refreshing pop to the palette that awakens the senses and inspires joy. And thankfully to us, the family at Château Gaillard knows what they’re doing.
With over 120 years of winemaking expertise passed down through the generations of his family-run estate, Sebastian Gutty perfectly utilizes organic farming methods, indigenous yeasts, hand sorting, and fermentation in foudre to take clusters of Gamay and turn them into the fruity and perfume-forward wine they so desperately want to be.
Now the wine…
So, what is this fruity and perfume-y wine I speak so highly of and what does it actually taste like?
Blueberry. Blueberry juice with a touch of tart strawberries. Blueberry juice with a touch of tart strawberries and a playful punch of plum.
It’s really good - really fuck**g good.
Beaujolais is meant to be thirst quenching and enjoyable. If you’re looking for the astringent and mouth puckering taste that tannins bring along, this wine might not be for you. However, if you want a summer sipper with relatively light ABV and low tannin structure, but still a bit of fruit-like pleasant sourness, thennnnn “Have you met my friend [Alice]”?
You two will be a match made in wine heaven.
For the record…
In honor of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s residency tour currently spreading its magic across the continental United States, we’re going with their summertime dreamy synth pop record, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon.
For those of you somewhat familiar with KGLW’s typical feverish and unpredictable sound, don’t fret - Paper Mâché is not that.
No promises that I won’t want to splash a bit of their more chaotic records into this group at some point down the road, but for the time being, I’m actually trying to get people involved in this group instead of scaring people away!
All nonsensical threats to share my weird abstract taste in music aside, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon is one of the few records out of King Gizz’s 25+ record lineup that I would genuinely recommend to anyone willing to give it a try. It’s 45 straight minutes of ruby-red, happy, summertime, dream pop just waiting to put a tap in your foot and a smile on your Beaujolais-stained face.
What else can I say…
For those of you that skimmed your way down here to the scraps at the bottom, all I need you to do is jump back up to the “A quick assignment…” section to do me a solid and share your thoughts after completing Step 4.
Other than that, walk away knowing that Beaujolais is a wine worth paying attention to, Asheville has a better than expected wine scene (and I had high hopes), and any band that puts out 25+ albums is bound to have one for you to enjoy.
I’ll be back next week -
Cheers!