Wine of the week: an unnervingly serious Bojo

published 22 September 2020

2019 Brouilly, La Croix des Rameaux, Jean-Claude Lapalu, Beaujolais, France

£19 per bottle in bond, laywheeler.com

I am aware that I reviewed a Côte de Brouilly only last week, but the repetition is not an oversight. I feature here the most delicious and noteworthy bottle of wine that I taste each week, regardless of style, so I am the first to admit it is a little odd to read about two elite Beaujolais in only eight days. But by the time you slap duty and VAT on the price of La Croix des Rameaux, you will end up at £25, so this is far from a regular Bojo. With stunning balance and tenderness coupled with epic cherry fruit notes, which come from ancient vines, all held together with a stern backbone of minerality and rigidity, this is an unnervingly serious wine and I urge you to taste it.

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Not content with just one Lapalu to shout about, 2019 Eau Forte, Vin de France (also £19 in bond) is a wild, light, painfully pale and intriguingly gluggable vin de soif. Made from 100% whole bunches and with no additions of sulphur, this is a rare and genuinely delicious “natural” wine, which Lapalu releases under the lowly Vin de France classification because he is too frustrated with the AOC authorities not agreeing that a wine of this colour could indeed be a Beaujolais! A Vin de France can be any colour it likes and so Eau Forte literally wears its heart on its sleeve. Lapalu is an inspiration. Lay & Wheeler wine buyer Catherine Petrie MW has underlined her reputation as a knockout taster by tracking down these incredible wines.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition’s Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com)

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Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.