Terres Dorées Beaujolais L'Ancien Vieilles Vignes 2022

90+ points John Gilman (View From the Cellar): "Jean-Paul Brun’s 2022 Beaujolais “Cuvée l’Ancien” Vieilles Vignes is a fine example of the vintage, but it is a young and structured wine (like a Cru) and will need some cellaring time before it starts to drink with generosity. The youthful nose offers up a bright and precise blend of cherries, sweet cranberries, vinesmoke, pigeon, a complex base of soil, a dollop of fresh thyme and a topnote of rose petals. On the palate the wine is bright, deep and full-bodied, with impressive transparency and grip, moderate tannins and fine balance on the long and tangy finish. Give this a few years of bottle age to blossom. 2026-2040. (Nov/Dec 2023)"

Importer notes: "100% Gamay. The Terres Dorées L'Ancien vines are Jean Paul's oldest vines at 40-60 years old. They grow on the sandy clay-limestone hills in his home village of Charnay in the southern Beaujolais and yield small, thick-skinned berries. The farming is organic and harvest manual. The earliest harvest of these vines goes into his Nouveau. Unlike any other Nouveau out there, there is no carbonic maceration (true for all of his Gamays). The bunches are destemmed, the fruit crushed and fermented with native yeasts in tank, notably with no chaptalization; it is aged briefly, though longer than most Nouveaux, and bottled in time to land in the states by December."