Jean-Claude Lapalu, Vieilles Vignes Brouilly, 2022

This is Beuajolais; this is Gamay.

Yet neither of these statements will adequately prepare you for the soaring quality that this wine delivers. Made in two portions - one conventionally and the other using carbonic maceration - they undergo malolactic fermentation and are then blended before settling for the winter months and bottling. This is a pure and profound expression of very old vines Gamay in one of the best site for the grape variety in the world.

The result is a wine closer to Beaune villages in style than what we expect to find in Beaujolais wines from the past four or five decades. The dark red fruits on the nose and palate show one hand of the quality piece, while a compelling and searching minerality makes you wanting to find out more and more with increased eagerness. Honestly, it's no wonder that the new wave of wine drinkers are obsessed with Beaujolais if this is their touchstone.

Yet it really feels as though the wine is also hewn from the rocks; as one of my friends says about this particular wine, "it's a bit like if you could ever liquefy granite...".

Lapalu himself claims that the success of this and all his wines is found squarely in the vineyards: he has 9 hectares of old vines in Brouilly and these are organic and biodynamically farmed, as has been the case since he inherited the estate from his father in 1996. The winemaking is a function to him, rather than an art: it really is as natural as anything else he knows. No added sulphur except the smallest amounts (less than 20 parts per million) just before bottling.