Tasted in Juliénas with Sylvain Tête, 22 February 2023.
Michel & Sylvain Tête
“Les Gonnards”
69840 Juliénas
Tel: +33 4 74 04 41 62
www.micheltete.com
More reports with Domaine Michel & Sylvain Tête
Sylvain on 2022:
“Well, we had 50% losses in 5 hectares in Jullié – that was the hail – but otherwise I’m really happy with the year. Just one cuvée was a little slow to ferment. It was a vintage that sailed close to over-ripe but not quite – and I’m a late harvester in general so no, I’m very happy. I bottled some white this morning!”
Sylvain on 2021:
“We have mainly mid-slope vines and we didn’t really have many problems with frost – the lower slopes yes – but I’m happy with the volume. 40 hl/ha. It was a pretty catastrophic period in the mid-season which brought on the maladies – so there were some losses there. And a large part is sold – the villages and a lot of the Juliénas are already gone.”
The wines…
A short tasting – these 21s were the only ones left at the domaine – but what I tasted was more than good – the St.Amour, in particular, is worth a special search.
2021 Beaujolais Villages
Modest colour – the nose is on the modest side too but with clean and pretty red fruit. In the mouth too – juicy red fruit with nice energy – attractive structure in the finish here too – no simple wine – it’s really excellent.
2021 Juliénas Clos de la Fief
3ha lieu-dit here. Bottled in May
Also not a deeply coloured wine and also a wine of very fine, pure, red berry aromas. More structural, but with flavour that melts over the palate. Almost chewy structure/tannin in this finish – a super wine but wait a year whilst drinking the BJV!
1 ha of this the soils a bit more like Juliénas here but plain south facing. Bottled end of August – ‘this like all the others was very hard during elevage – it was only after the 22 harvest that it started to express itself.’
Extra colour and extra aromatics – deeper red fruit darker-red than the others and more perfumed too. Wow – that’s a mouthful of mouth-watering energy – very finely framed with a tiny grain of tannin but juicy, direct, slightly creamy red fruit – but there are no barrels here – extra long. Bravo!