Domaine des Terres Dorées ‘Chardonnay Classic’

This is a lively and fresh Chardonnay from the "Golden Stones" in the south of Beaujolais. It is dry with lovely intense ripe fruit and citrus flavours — pure, juicy and succulent with a very long and excellent finish.

The soil here is similar in Burgundy (yet unlike the granite soils of the Crus to the north). The vines were planted in 1983. There is no oak in the ferment, just concrete to reflect the terroir.

Country

France

Region

Beaujolais

Grapes

Chardonnay

Vintage

2019

ABV

12.5

Code

11087

Style

White

Methods

• Organic

Jean Paul-Brun’s vineyard is located in a stunning area known as the “Region of Golden Stones” in southern Beajolais. He started Domaine Terres Dorées in 1979 with only four hectares of vines. Back then, the grapes vied for space with the cows, sheep, pigs and cereal crops of his father’s farm.

When his father retired, Jean-Paul started winemaking in earnest. Today, his wines garner quite a lot of press for the unorthodox way in which they are made and for their sheer quality. Jean-Paul has managed to produce outstanding wine that is not typical of the Beaujolais appellation.

Jean-Paul practices organic winemaking and has no time for winemakers who jump on “cool” bandwagons without actually putting the work in on the vineyard. To him there are two types of wine; industrial and artisanal. Artisanal wines are those “where you can taste and feel the vigneron’s sensibilities.”

He gets particularly annoyed by those who claim to be natural winemakers or sulphur free but that in reality end up using chemicals when they realise their wine is not good to begin with. He feels this discredits the natural winemaking movement. For him, natural winemaking is about being an honest winemaker.

Jean-Paul Brun’s methods are a lot more labour intensive than conventional methods. He is one of only 5% of French winemakers who use natural indigenous yeasts. This means he has to check his vats every morning to ensure fermentation is proceeding as he would like.

His reason for working like this? “I work this way because of a personal choice, out of respect to the planet and the people that drink our wines. The quality in my grapes was already there but now we work in a way that respects nature and we know it’s important for the future so it just feels like the right thing to do.”