Tasting Georges DuBoeuf Beaujoalis Selections and Burgers

On Tuesday July 26th, I participated in a wonderful tasting of Beaujolais wine from Georges Duboeuf, paired with different kinds of burgers. This was a "Twitter Taste Live", hosted by the fine folks at WineTwits, with wine bloggers from around the country sent packages containing three different Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais wines, recipes for burgers, fact sheets, and other supplies. Our title being "Burgers With a Side of Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais". The idea being to host a tasting of the Georges Duboeuf wines and cook up a spread of burgers to highlight how well the wine and burgers pair together. Very nice summer tie-in and more evidence of the Georges Duboeuf firm trying to move past l'affaire Duboeuf of 2003/2004.

In addition to the Twitter participants, there was one location where a chef (Bob Waggoner aka Chef Bob) was cooking up the burger recipes for audience members, and a representative from Georges Duboeuf was on hand to discuss the wines and answer questions from both the Twitter and live audiences.

When I got the email invite, I was really excited to participate. Often I've watched from afar as my fellow wine bloggers get great wines to taste and tweet about. Unfortunately some of them do a crappy job of writing up the wines and tasting experiences, but that's a bit tangential to this blog.

Back to the point, I was sent the package of three bottles of 2009 vintage Beaujolais, from Beaujolais-Villages, Julienas Chateau des Capitans, and Brouilly. All were from Georges Duboeuf and were priced at $9.99, $17.99, and $13.99 respectively. The three recipes to pair with these wines were for angus burgers, grilled portabella burgers, and turkey burger sliders.

I went a different route. Instead of dropping some coin on all the food needed for the three recipes, and considering that only a handful of my friends made it over, I made two "burgers". One, using the frozen Kobe beef patties from Trader Joe's and the other using some albacore tuna steaks.

With the beef burger, I decided on swiss cheese and bacon, along with the usual lettuce and tomatoes. Instead of slathering on the catsup and mustard though, I made a garlic sun-dried tomato mayonaise and used that. The reactions ranged from "mmsogoodmmmmm" to "holy $*@! you nailed it!" and even a "let me eat in peace!". Our little group's consensus was that the Brouilly paired best with this burger because it had enough acid and fruit to help with the richness of the beef and cheese while handling the bacon and rich mayo with it's streak of fine-grained tannin.

That's not to say the other wines weren't also good pairings but I felt the Beaujolais-Villages was too soft and fruity, too round to deal with the complex textures in the food. It had lots of ripe fruit and some good clean acid, but remained linear and fairly simple. On the other hand, the Julienas was an excellent wine but I felt it was too young and needed more time in a decanter or even a few years to fully integrate the tannin and fruit together.

Next up was the albacore-steak burger, which I chose to make in two versions, with bacon and without bacon. The cheese was a sharp cheddar, and I did use the garlic mayo spread that I had made previously. Here is where the Beaujolais-Villages shined with it's ripe fruit and minerality playing well off the sharp cheddar and clean tuna flavors. To me the bacon was a nice savory dimension, however, my friends thought it was a bit distracting. I can see their point of view and next time plan to try the tuna steak with a different preparation.

All in all I think the tasting was a success, I enjoyed following along with the WineTwits streaming audio and video, they did a superb job of hosting this event. I liked how the moderator kept the crowd engaged but also moving along from wine to wine. Chef Bob is entertaining, outgoing, and loves to engage his audience. Plus his food looked delicious.

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2009 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais-Villages:
Bright purple, and I mean really bright, glistening purple. Simplistic but for less than $10, what did you expect? I enjoyed the ripe black fruits, this was all voilets, plum skin, and blackberry to me on the nose. Those came through on the palate too, bringing a dumptruck of fresh acidity and wet river rock. Silky smooth tannins and a solid if average-length finish. Not too bad at all and a wine to quaff on a Wednesday night with burgers or a pizza. I'd still pick the 2009 Joseph Drouhin Morgon or 2009 Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages at around $10 though.

2009 Georges Duboeuf Brouilly:
What a smashingly fun wine! Is "smashingly" even a word? Who cares, this is a cost effective Beaujolais that expresses fantastic sense of place. As I kept shoving my nose into the glass, I picked up things like crushed violet petals and the smell of a wet gravel driveway. There was some fruit here, more of that plum and even something like ripe blackberries. The acidity was perceptible even on the bouquet, it made my mouth water and beg to taste the wine. The '09 Duboeuf Brouilly was my favorite wine of the night, a bright burst of acid and that savory, spicy blackberry/plum/violet melange working together with firm tannin. In a word, delicious! At a suggested retail of $13 and available for around $10, I'd buy six bottles to have on hand through the summer and into autumn.

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2009 Georges Duboeuf Julienas Chateau des Capitans:
The most expensive Beaujolais of the night, though not a terribly expensive example of a Cru level Beaujolais by any means. All the fruit is from the Julienas AOC and the Chateau des Capitans sub-region where the wine sees some time in oak barrels before bottling. Of the three wines I tasted for the "Burgers With a Side of Beaujolais", this had the most potential to gain complexity with some bottle age. On the 26th, it was young and racy, lots of acid and firm tannin enveloping cinnamon toast, black currants, sour cherry, and boysenberry. One day after opening, the acid started to balance with the fruit and this Beaujolais got even better. It paired well with the Kobe burger and at a suggested retail of $17.99, is a nice pick for mid-week or casual weekend sipping with your friends. Home made pizzas or even something as simple as meatloaf would be a fun pairing.

I think this tasting went a long way to dispelling the myth that Beaujolais wines aren't good quality and that the only juice from that area is Beaujolais Nouveau. 2009 is considered one of the best years of late by some critics, others see it as creatings overripe wines that aren't historically what the best of Beaujolais has produced.

My take: These wines are great quality at unbeatable prices and offer us wine lovers something new and relatively different to explore. Sure they might be more fruit-forward and less inclined to drying acidity than before, but who cares? In 2009, the terroir produced these low alcohol, delicious examples of gamay noir and they're all worth a shot.

I want to thank the people at WineTwits for inviting me to taste and tweet. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, this is why I kept using the "#GDandBurgers" hashtag. I apologize if I flooded your tweet-streams! you can follow WineTwits and hang out in their next live tasting, I hope to see you there!

Beau Carufel

Nestling Up to Another Beaujolais, Courtesy of Louis Jadot

Last Friday night I became acquainted with the 2009 Joseph Drouhin Morgon, a sublime bottle of gamay at the ridiculously-cheap price of $13. It was recommended by my friend David, during a discussion of the merits of the 2009 vintage in Beaujolais. Critics feel that the '09 vintage is superb, producing wines with a balance of ripe intensity and clean acidity. Traditionalists lament the ripeness, wishing for a return to the austerity and "purity" (as they call it) of previous, less heralded vintages. It doesn't hurt that Beaujolais is enjoying a moment of glory amongst the sommeliers, bloggerati/Twitterati, and wine geek crowd.

You may ask, and rightly so, why there's a "villages" on the end of the Beaujolais. That is a differentiator meant to indicate a higher level of quality, mainly in the vineyard. In this instance, Louis Jadot makes a huge amount of wine from Burgundy and Beaujolais, including a "regular" Beaujolais bottling and this Beaujolais-Villages bottling. Here's to hoping I get to taste more wines from this wonderful producer.

The color is beautiful, a deep rich purple like you'd see in some medieval tapestry hanging in a 700 year old French church. It isn't opaque, I can see through to the bottom of my glass yet that just manages to work for this wine. Since I'm new to actually evaluating wines from Beaujolais, I keep finding myself making the comparison to Burgundy, which is erroneous because the varietals are different beasts entirely. What I'm trying to say is that I like the color, it appeals to me on some level beyond just the topical "oh how pretty" aspect.

If you can imagine taking fresh, ripe plums and mashing them in a bowl then tossing in some river rocks and baking spices, that's what this wine smells like. I can also get a whiff of oak, but it's very integrated. Monsieur Lardiere, the winemaker for Louis Jadot, aged it for about ten months in French oak barrels. Nice bit of a floral component, but flowers with dark petals, like violets. I like this Beaujolais, the nose is appealing in a way that makes the wine seem alive, inviting but also something else. This isn't a big, bombastic assault on your nostrils like you'd get in an Australian shiraz or California cabernet. Right now the word I keep thinking of is "alluring" but that seems overplayed. Seductive adds too much of a sexual connotation to the wine, this Louis Jadot isn't seductive. If I could just figure out what to call that quality. Je ne sais pas!

What a contrast from the 2009 Drouhin! Way more minerality here, in a sense more austere. You have to fight with the gravel and oak to find any kind of fruit. When the wine finally gives up the fruit, it's again a plummy, black currant kind of flavor. I don't mean to suggest the flavors are under-ripe, merely that they're harder to discern. The acidity here is a bit less focused than my last Beaujolais, I get the sense of it being somewhat spread out and not as linear but nevertheless it remains very potent and definitely grabbed my attention.

Overall, the 2009 Jadot is good stuff, a lot of fun to drink and explore. I think perhaps it is veering towards the wine-geek side versus the casual drinker side though. Maybe another six months to one year in the bottle will allow some of the more potent minerality elements to recede, allowing that lovely fruit and floral to shine through. Since Easter is approaching, a great pairing would be a rack of lamb that's been baked with lots of herbs. Alternatively, some prefer ham with Easter meals but I'd caution against a honey baked ham, the pairing doesn't seem like it would taste good at all.

For a suggested retail price of $13, and a real-world retail for as little as $9, this is a QPR winner and a wine you should pick up as a way to explore outside the typical "new world style" wines you might drink. I highly recommend it, giving a B and a STRONG BUY recommendation. While that may cause wine geeks and wine experts to scoff a little bit, they would be well served to remember that we all must start liking wine at square one, and our journey takes different paths for each individual. To experience a great sense of terroir balanced with a winemaker's talents at a reasonable price, this is something you should buy. Where can you find the Louis Jadot wines? Everywhere! They're imported by Kobrand and distributed across the country. Try your local Beverages & More or supermarket.

This wine was received as a sample for review purposes from Kobrand. 

Beau Carufel

It's Friday Night and the Morgon Beckons

2009 Joseph Drouhin Morgon
100% gamay, as that is the only grape that you can legally use in the appellation of Beaujolais. Looks like someone took the color purple and ran 10,000 volts through it. Smells like crushed violet petals, spices, gravel, and smashed grapes. You want to shove your nose into the glass as far as it'll go, you want to spend an hour just smelling the wine, searching for every nuanced aroma you can find.

Don't do that, you'd be depriving yourself of something sublime. Take a sip! Feel the velvety ripeness slide into your arms and whisper words like "plum, spice, minerals". In your arms, feel the curves in all the right places, making you want to hug this wine closer to feel its embrace on a deeper level. But wait, here comes something slinky, equally seductive yet leaner, more focused. Your palate can't help but notice acidity and the way she gracefully slides between you and ripeness. Every part of your palate tingles with her presence, yet she too is fleeting. While you sit and ponder what's happening, she slides away and there's nothing you can do about it beyond admire the elegance and grace with which she recedes from view.

So you sip again, once more you experience something wonderful, a wine with soul. There's beauty here, an expression of a grape manifesting as an event. The synergy between emotion and consumption reminds us that  wine does hold a special meaning in our hearts.

Beau Carufel