Jean Paul Brun Fleurie

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Brun’s 2008 Fleurie is based on purchased fruit, but represents an exercise in the crafting of a cru in which beginning this year he has vines of his own. Bright, brash, sappy red raspberry and plum in fresh and distilled formats are allied to salted, toasted nuts, fruit pit bitterness, and a clean, marrow-like meatiness. The texture is lean and the finish slightly austere, but this is a wine of admirable energy and complexity, likely to be worth cellaring for at least 3-4 years. It comes from fruit on the west side of the appellation, but if you’d have asked me, tasting blind, I would probably have said “Moulin-a-Vent or nearby Fleurie.” Jean-Paul Brun – like Pierre Chermette – made his reputation in Beaujolais the hard way (as if making a reputation anywhere in this region is easy!) by taking a vocal position on quality and crafting exemplary wines with the lowest regional classification, plain “Beaujolais,” from chalk-clay soils in the south. Only then was he able to acquire fruit and eventually properties in the northern, granite-based crus, a collection which now forms a quartet (whose performance in vintage 2007 I missed and Brun did not volunteer to re-stage this spring). Chalk clay soils in the south of Beaujolais distinguish not only the eponymous appellation but also explain the prevalence of Chardonnay – most bottled as Bourgogne Blanc rather than Beaujolais Blanc, and of which Brun’s is not only the best, but one I rate among the world’s handful of consistently finest Chardonnay values.Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334 8191