Tasted in Le Perréon with President of the cave, Jean-Luc Morion (to the right) and local winemaker Jean-Michel Casadella, 07 February 2018.

Cave du Château des Loges
Rue des Loges
69460 Le Perréon
Tel: 00 33 4 74 03 22 83
www.caveduperreon.fr

This cave co-operative​ was established in 1961. With 150 members the cave produces wine from 450 hectares. Unsurprisingly, given its location, the production here is mainly Beaujolais Villages, with some generic Beaujolais too. They have slowly grown the amount of Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly and Fleurie that they produce, and also have, as Jean-Luc describes it, anecdotes of Régnié and Beaujolais Blanc – 1.5 hectares of each…

The château itself was constructed in the late 18th century, being bought by a group of vineyard owners in 1960 as the site for a local cooperative. Behind the château was a hillside topped with vines – climat Les Loges – topped by the statue of the Madonne des Loges. Given the hillside setting, the reception of grapes was planned for the top of the hill so that operation could largely be done by gravity. In their first vintage, in 1961, they made wine from a total of 47 hectares. The size of their exploitation grew significantly in the 1980s, but even today there are one or two new members each year.

Jean-Luc explains that they only use stainless-steel tanks for elevage – using the equivalent of 25 tonnes of grapes per tank. They currently have a good sales in the UK to supermarkets such as Tesco and Morrisons. They commercialise about 25% of their production, some in the shop here, the rest being sold in bulk to the large négoce.

The wines…

Easy, tasty though quite modest wines. It was only the Côte de Brouilly that had my attention – and that was a 2015…

2016 Beaujolais Blanc
About 1% of the the production is white here. These vines in the direction of Arnas which is more argillo-calcaire and some sand
Bright and fresh. Theres a good aromatic volume here. Supple with a hint of minerality, slowly melting in the middle – a little rigour, but really a quite good wine. Very persistent.

2017 Beaujolais Villages
Just to see. Probably bottling in March. 17 here was a lower volume but principally it was the dryness that was to blame, so probably was down about 25% in terms of volume.
Pretty fruit-gum sweets on the nose. A base of grippy but fine tannin, good depth of flavour – easy flavour – plenty of width and good length. Modest but a good mouthful of flavour. A finishing rasp of tannin and even a suggestion of finishing salinity…

2016 Beaujolais Villages
Relatively modest colour – for Beaujolais! The nose is relatively open. Again relatively (again!) easy but it has a more overt and open, indeed delicious complexity – floral dimensions in the flavours. Holds quite well – again modest intensity but fine flavour.

2016 Brouilly
40 hectares in Brouilly, mainly it is for the French market.
A deeper nose – more weight, the slightest hint of reduction. Open again on the palate, plenty of tannin at the base but velvet tannin. Again a little floral complexity but more direct flavoured than the BJV and lacking a little of that wine’s friendliness today – wait 6-12 months. Easy wine…

2015 Côte de Brouilly
A little deeper colour. The nose starts also with a little reduction (all are Nomacorc sealed) but with swirling the nose has some very attractive fruit. Larger scaled in the mouth, intense and concentrated – plemnty of tannin again. Flavour slowly melting from the structure – a wine to definitely wait for – it’s quite good!