Julien Duport – 2015

21.3.2017billn

Tasted in Odénas with Julien Duport, 20 February 2017.

Julien Duport
Hameau Brouilly
69460 Odénas
+33 6 81 83 10 21

Julien on 2016:
A really complicated vintage with lots of spring rain, and pressure of sickness. It was a late finishing year, but with great weather. We were not touched by hail or frost so it was a good vintage in the end and I’m happy with the quantity – it was beneficial to really wait for the right time. The wines already seem quite flattering and I expect that they will keep well.

Julien on 2015:
It was a small volume, we did 38 hectolitres per hectare – it was really due to the small size of the grapes – there were the same number of grapes as usual! We needed to do only 4 treatments in the whole year – it’s the cleanest harvest that I’ve seen…

Julien is making some new plantings at 9,000 vines per hectare and is also changing his ideas a little in the cuverie; “I work with the extraction, the wines are quite rich but I am also reducing the amount of sulfur I use too.

The wines…

All these wines made the the same way, only the Beaujolais Villages with a pure carbonic fermentation.

2015 Beaujolais Villages
From a south-facing granitic hillside.
Deep, dark but also wide and fresh, almost a little peppery. Nice volume in the mouth and a very good line of flavour. The flavour is a little herbal but with a great and tasty length – really wide finishing. The finish is very tasty indeed.

2015 Brouilly le Folie
35-40 year old vines at the top of the hill, ‘has a good concentration but it keeps its finesse.’
This is also deep and dark with a little more sweetness to the fruit and almost a suggestion of menthol. Sweeter, wider, very nice freshness and a quickly growing intensity. This is delicious with a lick of tannin growing in the mid-palate. Silky texture and a nice width of finishing flavour – excellent – and really long too… This nose just gets better and better with air – bravo!
2014 Côte de Brouilly Lieu-dit Brouilly
To be bottled this week. Blue rock, at the start of that sector, here is ‘cuvée Lieu-dit Brouilly’ on the label.
Attractive spicy, peppery dark fruit – a little more structure but the bright and delicious fruit cuts easily though. This is clearly for keeping a little longer. The line of salt accented flavour is simply excellent. Super wine.

2015 Côte de Brouilly Boucheratte
These 130 year-old vines have no maladies and manage to deliver 35 hl/ha without trouble. Left side of the hill, high up plain west-facing. Always a good maturity indeed early ripening. The only wine with barrel elevage.
Oaky but also a little floral – eventually lavender – that’s a first! this nose seems to offer a cushioned texture. Lithe, direct, great texture again – there’s the sense of tannin with virtually no texture of tannin. There is so much energy here – melting flavour too. It’s all wrapped with plenty of oak, but this is brilliant. I’d wait ten years, it’s great stuff! Julien says 7-8 years, he likes his oak!

2015 Côte de Brouilly Empreintes
500 l for 12 months, not made every year – an assembly of multiple parcels.
A nose that harks to the last but perhaps more elegance – certainly I see no overt oak here. Wide, fresh, ultra gorgeous in the mouth with very fine grain to the tannin. Dark fruited and almost a licorice in the finish. No barrel to speak of. Actually I found the finishing flavour of the last more expressive, but this is equally special. Super! The nose improves still further with time in the glass.

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