Our Tasting Note: Deep ruby-purple at the core with vibrant red edges. Fresh, crushed red cherry and raspberry rise from the glass, along with peppery spice, a touch of woodsy character from the whole clusters, and a crushed- granite stone mineral note. The palate is medium bodied, with generous fruit, youthful, slightly grainy tannins, and acidity that gives the wine plenty of life and energy. Cherry, raspberry, spice, and stony flavors carry through to a long finish that overdelivers for the price. It’s fun and classic at the same time. Delicious now, with enough structure to reward a few years in the cellar. A convincing case for paying attention to Lantignié!
This is the primary production wine of Dubost from several parcels totalling ten hectares surrounding their home village of Lantignié, just south of Chiroubles and west of Régnié, with a terroir of Muscovite granite and blue clay. The Beaujolais-Lantignié actually drinks more like a cru—which it may well become one day—and is frankly a terrific value.
- Undergoes a classic semi-carbonic maceration of whole clusters over 15 days in steel tanks, with twice daily pump-overs
- Left in the steel tanks to age for 8 months
- Bottled in the spring with a light filtration and no added sulphur.
Lantignie
Beaujolais-Lantignié may sound new, but the name has been around since 1936. For decades, the wines were sold as Beaujolais-Villages. Now a younger group of growers is putting Lantignié back on the label and showing what this part of Beaujolais can do. Its blue clay soils recall Chiroubles, while the wines can have some of the power you might expect from Brouilly.
The Vigneron
Jean-Paul Dubost produces wines that combine lusciousness of fruit, mineral rigor, and open-armed friendliness in a way only great Beaujolais can.
From his 26 hectares in Lantignie, Brouilly, Moulin-a-Vent, and Morgon, fourth-generation vigneron Jean-Paul Dubost produces wines that combine lusciousness of fruit, mineral rigor, and open-armed friendliness in a way only great Beaujolais can. Jean-Paul assumed control of his family's holdings in the mid-1990s, gradually steering viticulture toward organic practices, and today all parcels are either farmed fully organically or are in organic conversion. Dubost's cellar regimen pulls simultaneously from regional tradition and thoughtful low-interventionism: spontaneous fermentations; classic semi-carbonic macerations, with no-destemming employed except for the naturally ultra-structured Moulin-a-Vent; and bottling with extremely low levels of added sulfur dioxide.
Rather than conveying an overarching house style, Jean-Paul's wines articulate with stark clarity their parcels and crus of origin, and the subtle differences he employs in the vinification and elevage of each wine serve only to enhance the transmission of terroir. With Dubost, one feels viscerally the stony snap of Brouilly, the lurking spicy power of Moulin-a-Vent, and the broad generosity of Morgon; and the wines from his home village of Lantignie, which flanks Regnie and Morgon to the west, feel more like great examples of cru Beaujolais than simple villages-level fare.
