Tasted in Lantignié with Pierre-Alexandre Gauthier, 24 February 2021.
Domaine de Colette
4245 Route St Joseph
69430 Lantignié
Tel: +33 4 74 69 25 73
www.domainedecolette.com
More reports for Domaine de Colette
Pierre-Alexandre on 2019:
“Well, the whites are already sold out but there are still reds! For us, it’s a nicely balanced vintage, one that’s very Beaujolais, nicely acidulated fruit – not the longest wines but lovely. Our yields were about 40-45 hl/ha – we don’t look for more so happy with that – there was just a little frost in Fleurie but nothing too bad. The grapes were very clean and we saw no maladies. We’re generally quite high in altitude – for many years almost too high – but that tendency has reversed – in the last years we’ve been very well positioned!”
The wines…
Wines that ran the range from good to really excellent – a couple of the cuvées with a forward pyrazine note.
It’s a mix of 17s and 18s that are the currently commercial vintages but all of these 19s were bottled last year:
2019 Beaujolais-Lantignié
Last harvested here the vines on the hill behind the domaine (In Pierre-Alexandre’s image above) with 70-80-year-old vines, worked organically – already HVE but started organic conversion for over 12 ha of the domaine in 2020.
That’s a deep and richly-fruited nose, textural, but with freshness too. Supple, concentrated, deliciously flavoured and beautifully textured – über-fine-grained tannin. Another excellent wine with this label in 2019 – I find a super length too.
2019 Beaujolais Villages Coteaux du Colette
This the historic cuvée of the domaine, an assembly of parcels around the lieu-dit of Colette, mainly granite but 30% on blue-stone too.
Wider, fresher more vibrant nose, accented with a small pyrazine. Round in the mouth, the tannin finer than the Lantignié – practically grainless – open, mobile, beautifully shaped. Long, mineral, always with a small suggestion of pyrazine but on an attractive level here.
2019 Fleurie
Plenty of colour – two parcels about 400m apart but the same soil – nearly 1ha vinified as a single cuvée. Had since 2010 a mix of ages but really have no idea of the actual ages – 1950s to 1980 probably – usually the first harvested vines
The nose starts tighter, it’s deep, perhaps faintly reductive. Concentrated – deeply flavoured – no simple floral wine here. Weight of flavour that needs some time to open out but another beautifully textured wine that holds an impressive finish, plenty of graphite minerality and a much subtler pyrazine than the previous wine – bringing a bit of extra finishing energy…
2019 Regnié Vieilles-Vignes
3.5 ha in total the majority of which is over 60 years-old. A large part in La Ronze and the rest on the hill behind the domaine – a new parcel/cuvée coming in 2020.
Much more open, a freshness with plenty of pyrazine again. More open and with more overt energy than the Fleurie – here with extra floral complexity too – that’s a super wine, slowly lingering flavour with large impact but subtly long and tasty.
2019 Régnie Côteaux Vallière
A south-facing hillside of old vines. It’s granitic soil but with lots of stones. Always small grapes with lots of concentration. This stays in cement with its fine lees until it’s time for bottling.
A deeper nose, almost a reductive, smoky style to this wine. In the mouth too – this is wide, slowly mouth-filling, smoky in style but with some balancing freshness to the modest tannin that frames the flavours. Wider finishing too. The smokiness a sign of this parcel every year but if they do some destemming the character fades.
2019 Morgon
A single parcel of around 1 ha with vines of 80-100 years, mainly in Les Charmes, facing south.
Here starting with a real reduction, aeration slowly liberating some redder aspects of the fruit. Wider and fresher, here with a lovely, lovely texture – more silk than velvet – slowly deepening with extra layers of flavour in the middle and finish. A contemplative finish but a delicious one too – lightly herbed complexity here.
2019 Morgon Les Charmes
A narrower nose but with more obvious floral higher notes. A modest impact – charming perhaps – but a wine that plays over the palate with freshness and with a mobile style to its flavour. Slowly growing wider and wider in the middle and finishing flavours – a wine that widens out and has a nice finishing burst of more floral flavour. This is subtly long too – a wine that creeps up on you!
2019 Moulin à Vent Le Mont
An enclave in the Rochegrès of Chateau de Jacques, not much suffering from dryness here but a potential alcohol that can be higher than the other domaine’s wines
An easy purity, indeed clarity of darker-red fruit here. A wine that starts with modest size but very quickly grows in stature – much complexity. There’s tannin but with no grain to find, another more contemplative wine but with much more overt complexity today – quite easy if you don’t want to pay full attention but long and impressive wine – indeed really excellent wine.