Brouilly

When I started this exercise in continued investigation into the wines of the world it was because I knew that the formal education I had had was by no means exhaustive. It had provided me with a solid body of knowledge and an appreciation of some of the complexities of the subject but, as many people find with a great range of topics, I felt that the more I had learned the more I had understood how little I knew and how much more there was to be discovered. Hence this blog.

I have commented on prejudice a few times and this week's wine could have become a victim of this:

Week B (2021) Domaine Tavian, Brouilly, 2020. Waitrose £12.99. 

Over two evenings recently The One and I dined with some good friends. Of the four of us only two have any real taste for wine. This is, of course, perplexing but each to their own. There were two bottles sitting on the sideboard: this Brouilly and a South African Cabernet Sauvignon. We had already eaten in a local pub and so the wine was intended to accompany another game of cards. 'Which do you fancy?', I asked. 'The Cab Sav, or the Beaujolais?'  

I probably should not have said 'Beaujolais' as, I think, it set a negative expectation. I lost at cards over the South African wine.

The following evening we cooked a couple of juicy sirloin steaks on the bbq and found we had just the one bottle left. Conventual wine wisdom says that a sirloin steak needs a full-bodied wine with good tannins that will help to break down the proteins in the meat, or some such thing. Had we considered that on the previous evening, and had we correctly predicted we'd be buying steaks the following day, we may have drunk the Brouilly with the cards and saved the Cabernet Sauvignon for the steak. I'm glad we didn't. 

It's true that even the producer (or marketeer) of this wine recommends drinking it with 'Chinese dishes, white meats (especially chicken) and cheese', but we found this very enjoyable as a pair with the cow. It was smooth and medium-bodied, but not thin. It weighs in at 13% abv and has some nice red fruit flavours. One of the non-wine drinkers, who is coincidentally a very keen and skilled gardener, smelled it an immediately exclaimed 'cherries!'. Tannin does not really feature, although not entirely absent. Very easy to drink and in my opinion a good match for anything , especially in the summer.

A day or so later I asked my friend which wine he had preferred. Yup, this one.

Buy again? Yes.

p.s. if you had forgotten, I had said more about the production of Beaujolais seven years ago. You can refresh your memory here.