2009 Beaujolais

Last week's visit to Morgon with Eric Texier seemed a long, long time ago when I walked into a 2009 tasting of the Beaujolais on Rue Rivoli yesterday afternoon. The promoters called it Fabuleux Beaujolais 2009, a tasting through all of the crus. A great opportunity, in theory. Beaujolais. There are so many good ones. The region complains that they cannot get a foothold amongst drinkers but can't they see that the ones that are acclaimed like those from Lapierre, Chanudet & Foillard, Breton, Thevenet, Lapalu, J-P Brun, Coquelet, L&C Desvignes, de la Roilette, G. Descombes, and Ducroux, have no trouble selling? Why instead do they follow the espoofers instead of the true? So I walked into the hotel, through the lobby, picked up a glass and gave a nod of hello to the elegant M. Dubouef (in a dove grey suit) I had a go at it. Now, the 2009 Beaujo is being as heralded as the 2009 Bordeaux and both have the same problem as most of the country did in that year: high pH and low acidity = unstability and plenty of adjustment. Not to say that there aren't a heck of a lot of lovely wines out there, but it is certainly a year to be dedicated to your favorite producers who picked at the best time and didn't make wine according to recipe. But yet---it's the vintage of two -centuries---right? I was assaulted with (wine and after wine) thermo-vinification, banana and bubblegum aromas, and a nuclear burning in my mouth. Acidification is out of control in 2009. Burn, baby, burn, I heard myself thinking and headed off looking for an ice cube..when to my surprise, over at the Morgon table, I saw Mathieu Lapierre, the son of Marcel (who's wife just fed Eric and me some plump white asparagus the week before). "What ever are you doing in this company!" I said as I gave him two kisses. He explained, slyly, as he poured me some of the '09, that the day was the 21st, and as it was the night where all of France was lit up with street music, he wanted to be in Paris. "A good excuse," he said. His excuse was my salvation. The wine (which was not the unsulfured cuvee) was filled with baby powder and crushed roses. Yes, an '09 in heft, but Lapierre in elegance. That night I too headed out into the street to listen to music. It was Paris in all its glow and a 1l2 moon over the Seine. I aimed for the left bank, where the assortment of jazz, vintage, or voices raising up to the stars on blocked off streets, changed with every few steps. The feeling was joyous and innocent, sexual and raunchy. A perfect little nicoise on Rue de Seine at Poisson (creamy walnut-sized quail's eggs, marinated anchois) some young students traveling before they took on the world and presumed adulthood, and for the moment, the burn of the sad wines of '09 left, washed down by some enlivened, unacidified Pascal Franck bubbles and a fierce walk back to the 8th.