Domaine Laurent Martray Cote de Brouilly Les Feuillees
A Beaujolais cru from Justerini & Brooks, with some age
Whisper it, but I find I much prefer Beaujolais to red Burgundy. After years of trying to acquire the expensive habit of liking red Burgundy, I seem to have acquired the expensive habit of not liking red Burgundy.
I opened this alongside a more-expensive and older Volnay. And found I preferred this wine.
On reflection, it’s a skin thing; a decent Gamay will match Pinot for freshness, but — for me at least — offers a lot more interest from its thicker skins. As will a cool-climate Cab Franc. Which I also prefer.
This wine was reduce to around £10 in the Justerini’s sale from a list price of a little over £20; whilst Beaujolais tends to be expensive at the bottom end, lack of Burgundy’s cachet makes it much better relative value at the top end.
Not to be confused with Brouilly which surrounds it, Côte de Brouilly covers the slopes of Mont Brouilly, producing concentrated and elegant wines with floral characters.
J&B says:
The young and affable Laurent Martray controls 19 hectares of vines, predominantly in and around the village of Odenas in Brouilly. While making the wines at Château de la Chaize since 1987, Laurent has built up a sizable following for his own estate wines which currently adorn many of the finest addresses across France.
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Laurent’s vineyards are mainly situated on the top terroir of Combiaty in Brouilly itself, with just a single hectare planted on Mont Brouilly, from where his Côte de Brouilly ‘Les Feuilles’ Cuvée hails. The vines for this were planted in 1916 and grow on extremely rocky soils, giving rise to a wine with a strong inner core of typically high Cotes de Brouilly minerality.
His two Brouilly Cuvées differ from each other in that the Vielles Vignes cuvée is aged in traditional large oak foudres and muids, while ‘Corentin’ is aged in smaller oak barrels. The entire estate production is hand harvested, fermentations last between 8 and 10 days, and bottling is carried out without filtration. This is clearly a man who takes his production seriously, for the resulting wines display a level of sophistication and generosity that we have seldom seen in Beaujolais. There is trademark freshness, but also an amplitude that suggests these wines will age with grace. Certainly, older bottles we have seen suggest as much.
The combination of abundant red fruit married to stony minerality and moreishly refreshing acidity means that customers looking for an alternative to basic Pinot Noir should find much to enjoy here.
Domaine Laurent Martray, Cote de Brouilly, Les Feuillees, 2019 (around £20, Justerini & Brooks)
I say:
Fresh, elegant and complex Beaujolais cru
12.5%
translucent ruby garnet; crunchy, dried red fruits, dried green herbs and spice; fresh and plush with ripe red berry fruits, juicy cherry, raspberry and cranberry, dried red flowers, dried green herbs, minty eucalyptus and oaky spice. Concentrated and long with sleek, polished tannins and good savoury underpinnings.
Good.
Drinks nicely on first opening, opens up with aeration and will repay some further cellaring.
Match with roasted red meats such as peppered beef, duck breast or garlic and rosemary lamb joint.
