Beaujolais is one of the few classic wine regions in France where a winemaker looking to go out on his or her own might actually be able to do so without a substantial inheritance. It’s like opening a restaurant in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan, or Oakland instead of San Francisco: you can still do great things, but the costs of inputs are a little more manageable.
After more than a decade working for other people, Frédéric Berne added his name to the roster of Beaujolais upstarts when he hung his shingle in the tiny village of Lantingié and secured some vineyard land, including a .64-hectare sliver of a vineyard called “Corcelette” in Morgon (a site made famous by the iconic Jean Foillard). If there was a “Grand Cru” classification of Cru Beaujolais, this would be one. Berne’s first commercial vintage, 2014, has been much buzzed-about, and when we tasted it we understood why: As elegant and expressive as wines that cost twice as much, this is the equivalent of a first-edition book from an important author, or a blockbuster debut album. Offering this wine feels like getting in on the ground floor of something big; this guy is a talented artisan, and in a few years we can all say we ‘knew him when.’ Most important, the wine is delicious, and—for now anyway—supremely affordable.
The backstory of this wine is as charming as the wine itself: Frédéric was actually born on a farm in Beaujolais, but was encouraged by his parents to get out of agriculture. He gave the business world a shot, but an extremely brief one: he lasted all of one day at an IBM internship before ditching the suit and tie for wine. He worked for the Brouilly vintner Robert Perroud, and also did a stint at the Domaine de Soufrandière in Burgundy’s Mâcon region, where he really dug deep into the tenets of natural winemaking and biodynamic farming. When he decided to go out on his own, the owners of the Château des Vergers in Lantingié —longtime family friends of the Bernes—made their 17th century caves available to Frédéric for a modest rent comprised mostly of wine. Working with the castle’s old screw press, in cellars imbued with indigenous yeasts, Frédéric ferments his wines “semi” carbonically—meaning that he uses whole grape clusters but doesn’t seal up the fermentation vats (traditional ‘carbonic maceration’ in Beaujolais involves fermenting the wine in closed tanks under a blanket of CO2, which creates a plumper, more fruit-juicy style). This is a method often seen in more famous villages further north in Burgundy, and is associated with more refined, age-worthy wines.
The Château des Vergers’ home village of Lantingié is a little speck of a thing, home to fewer than 900 residents and situated within the larger “cru” village of Régnié (ren-YAY). Most of Berne’s vineyards are in Lantingié, where the soils are a mix of granite, quartz, fluorite, and barite—distinct enough from the broader area of Régnié that Frédéric is lobbying for Lantingié to become a cru-designated village in its own right. As for the Corcelette vineyard in the famous village of Morgon (also classified as one of the 10 Crus of Beaujolais), it is a lieu-dit (named vineyard) in the northwestern corner of the appellation, at an elevation of about 400 meters. The soils of Corcelette are a mix of granite and sandstone, as opposed to the granite and schist found at lower elevations. As mentioned above, this vineyard is one of the most celebrated sites in all of Beaujolais made famous by the legendary examples made by Jean-Foillard.
Berne’s 2014 Morgon Corcelette was aged in used barrels (4-8 years old) for about 13 months, and was bottled unfined, unfiltered, and with the absolute minimum addition of sulfur. In the glass it is a nearly opaque dark ruby, while on the nose it is a beguiling mix of black and red fruits: black raspberry, black currant, fresh red and black cherries and wild flowers with faint hints of white pepper and crushed granite. For the Beaujolais whisperers out there, I get some of the inky depth of Foillard and quite a bit of the clarity of Lapierre (if this means nothing to you, let your takeaway be that it is very elegant, even Pinot Noir-esque, with a backbone that isn’t always a given with the Gamay grape, regardless of the “Cru” village). I think, in fact, that it has a good 5-7 years of graceful evolution ahead of it, but I probably won’t be waiting that long: decant it about 30 minutes before serving in Burgundy stems, keeping the temperature at roughly 55-60 degrees to showcase its uplifted aromatics. It really delivers a lot of sophistication at this price point, and I look forward to subsequent vintages from this up-and-comer with great anticipation. In the meantime, I’m going to try a bottle of this 2014 with this recipe for
Cider-Cured Pork Chops. The mix of sweetness, earth, and spice should strike the right chord. (Although I admit it’d be awfully hard to go wrong with this super-versatile red.)
