Saturday, February 6, 2021

Thévenet Morgon Vieilles Vignes

I remain interested in exploring the cru Beaujolais, in particular from Morgon. This is where wine is made for ageing and where one may be able to find a wine similar in quality to a good Burgundy at 25% of the price. I thought maybe the 2018 Thévenet Morgon Vielles Vignes could be such a wine.


Jean-Paul Thévenet was named one of the 'Gang of Four' in the 1980s. The aim was to produce meaningful and complex wines by farming old vines and apply organic and biodynamic principles. There is no fining and filtration, and possibly no sulphur treatment. His wines come close to what some people call 'natural' wine.

And this shows immediately after opening the bottle and pouring a glass. The colour of the wine is ruby, quite intense, and a little cloudy. Red cherry is the dominant flavour, added to by some spice, earth and saltiness. The winemaking approach delivers a big mouthfeel and quite a ripe wine for Gamay. The tannins are quite smooth, and the finish medium to long.

I find it hard to rate this wine. The last paragraph suggests this is a very good wine, but I did not enjoy it that much. The cloudiness made the wine a bit clunky, lacking finesse. I assume the purpose here was to make a serious Gamay with good fruit weight, but this came at a cost, in my view.

Score: 89/-       



 

3 comments:

kr1 said...

do you think standing and a careful decant to avoid the cloudiness might help improve the wine tasting experience.
The cloudiness can be a turn off (e.g. i leave Bass Phillip wines alone for a good day and decant very slowly to avoid the sediment)

Alontin said...

You make a good point. I should have done this. I drank the wine over two evenings, and it was better on the second day. However, it was still cloudy, and more so than any Bass Phillip I have tried.

gronbim said...

Very crreative post