Beaujolais
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The vineyards napa wine tours home sweet home car service of Beaujolais extend north to south for some 35 miles over low granite hills in the southernmost reaches of Burgundy. For French administrative purposes, Beaujolais is considered part of Burgundy even though, aside from proximity, the two regions have almost nothing in common. napa wine tours home sweet home car service The climates are dissimilar; the grapes are different; the way the wines are made varies napa wine tours home sweet home car service radically. Even the spirit of each place is singular. Beaujolais is as lighthearted as Burgundy is wine rack serious.
Beaujolais is both the napa wine tours home sweet home car service name of the place and the wine made there. The sad misconception about the wine Beaujolais is that it’s soley a once a year wine experience, drunk around the en dof November when signs in restaurants and wine shops from Paris to Tokyo screem Le Beaujolais Est Arrive! (The Beaujolais has arrived!) What has arrived to be exact, is Beaujolais Nouveau, a napa wine tours home sweet home car service grapey young wine made immediately after the harvest in celebration. Beaujolais Nouveau is great fun, but as wines go, regular Beaujolais is so much better.
Beaujolais has been napa wine tours home sweet home car service called the only white wine that happens to be red. A aft reference, for despite its vivid magenta color, Beaujolais is quite like white wine in its expressiveness and thirst-quenching qualities. napa wine tours home sweet home car service The wine’s personality begins with the gamay grape, the only one used in Beaujolais’ production. Gamay’s flavors are virtually unmistakeable: a rush of sweet black cherry and black raspberry, then a napa wine tours home sweet home car service hint of peaches, violets and roses, followed by a smidgen of peppery spiciness at the end. In mnay reds a tight rasp of tannin acts as a cloak over the fruit flavors. Not so in Beaujolais. napa wine tours home sweet home car service Beacause gamay is naturally low in tannin, its already profuse fruitiness seems even more dramatic.
Beaujolais’ character comes, however, not solely from gamay, but also from the unusual manner in which the wine is made. napa wine tours home sweet home car service The process, a long tradition, is poker called carbonic maceration. During it, clusters of grapes are put whole into the fermenting tank and fermentation literally takes place inside each grape. napa wine tours home sweet home car service Carbonic maceration could theorotically be used with any grape, but it happens to be particularily successful with ultrafruity grapes, such as gamay.
After Beaujolais is napa wine tours home sweet home car service fermented, it rests in tanks (a few growers also put it briefly in small, relatively new oak) for five to nine months before being sold. Though five months may not seem long, it’s just enough to take napa wine tours home sweet home car service the grapey newborn edge off the wine and allow it to evolve more fruit, flower, and spice flavors.