🧨BANGING BEAUJOLAIS🧨

What’s up winos,

Megan on a Saturday? I know what you’re thinking. What did we do to deserve this treat? I’ll tell you. More big arrivals chez Parched (must stop answering the phone ‘Hello, this is Natty Boy Wines!’) and I couldn’t wait a second longer to tell you about them. We’ve just had a pallet of our next direct import land on our doorstep. Man, that trip to France was productive. And this is only the beginning! So much to come over the next few months, so keep those eyes peeled and those bank accounts topped up. But enough about the future, let’s live in the now.

The next producer to grace our elite list of direct imports is Laurence and Rémi Dufaitre, based in and around Brouilly in Beaujolais. I’ve had the pleasure now of visiting many producers, and I’ve learned there are a few different kinds of visits. There are the ones that last three hours, that include a tour of every single vineyard, touching the soil, tasting twenty different wines and enjoying a home-cooked meal (more about THAT incredible visit coming in the next month or so). And then there are visits that are just the most chilled thing ever. Chez Dufaitre was definitely the latter. When we rolled up to the vineyard, Rémi had just finished hosting a wine fair the day before (there were PILES of Ganevat just sitting by the door, my eyes were popping out my head), but he welcomed us into his stunning kitchen, which looked more like a spread from The Modern House than anything else, and steadily smoked his way through a pack of fags as we tasted his wines. Never one to miss out on a chance to embody a bit of French culture, I lit up as well, while Dan sat in the corner waving the smoke away with his hands. Philistine.

Rémi and Laurence started their winemaking careers in 2006 by growing and selling their fruit to local co-ops while they waited for the indigenous yeast population in their own cellar to be healthy enough to bottle their own wines. When they released their first vintage in 2010, none other than Jean Foillard got his mitts on one and immediately recognised their potential, so he took the couple under his wing. Quite the wing to be under. The winemaking is the same for all cuvées - whole bunch carbo with 0-2mg of sulfur added at bottling, as needed. The resulting wines are just beautiful - serious if you want them to be, with depth and complexity, but also fun enough (and fantastically priced enough) to splash about with abandon. Suffice to say we (apart from Designated Driver Dan) did not make much use of the spitoon at Rémi’s house. Waste not, and all that. He even sent us away with a mags at the end of the visit. Absolute king.

So what have we actually got for you? Glad u asked.

For your drinking pleasure, we’ve got a crisp but creamy Beaujolais Blanc, the epitome of a versatile white. We’ve got a Cinsault/Grenache blend that rides that fine line between skin contact and rosé, refreshment dialed up to 100. We’ve got a crunchy Villages-level bottling that’s nouveau in spirit but ancien in practice, with the average vine age being sixty years old. There’s an ultra-fresh Brouilly from a high-altitude parcel, and a super-old vine Brouilly that only gets made in the best years, which runs the full red fruit spectrum atop a stunning herbal backbone. And there’s a Cote-de-Brouilly bottling from eighty year old vines that’s the perfect combination of serious and fun.

And coz we just love you that much, if you stick an order in this weekend you’ll get 10% off any and all of these with the code Dufaitre Release. U. R. WELCOME.

Enjoy!!

xoxo

Megan