Jean-Claude Lapalu, Beaujolais Villages Nouveau, 2025

This is a Beaujolais Nouveau really worth getting excited about!

Only from the Cru Villages in Beaujolais, this is a really high-quality wine and just happens to have been made from the harvest that was finished about three weeks before the wine was bottled. Bright, juicy and fresh, with flavours of blackberry, bramble and cherries, this is very much a celebration of the harvest, but not at the end-of-the-barrel sort of level. Plus! It's only 11.5% alcohol!

This is a very classy Beaujolais Nouveau, made by a real champion of Beaujolais wines at a broad level, especially in the village of Brouilly. His winemaking is between the ultra-istes of the Natural movement and the modern, more intense style of the  younger school. This means that the wines are fresh and focused, but also really easy to drink.

He claims that the success is 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 as natural as anything else he knows. No added sulphur except the smallest amounts (less than 20 parts per million) just before bottling.

This Beaujolais will have high levels of ripe fruit flavour, low acidity and will be very easy to finish in one go.