£12.95–£16, The Wine Society, Haynes Hanson & Clark This is the kind of wine that gets pigeon-holed as a summer wine, usually as an alternative to Beaujolais, but it's absolutely delicious and deserves to be drunk all year, cool in winter, cooler still in summer. Like Beaujolais, it's made from Gamay, but in the small Côtes du Forez appellation in the Auvergne to the south west, near to the source of the river Loire. Gilles Bonnefoy, who started La Madone in the late 1990s a

£12, Haynes Hanson & Clark Vieilles Vignes are the key to the Boulon family's cracking Beaujolais, or certainly one of them. There's no variety of wine vine that seems to benefit more from age than Gamay. The vines that add depth and intensity to the quintessential exuberant charm and immediacy of this 2019 are all 60–100 years old. It starts with a lovely waft of strawberries and continues with a surge of soft summer-berries, stony, damp earth, a streak of currant leaf and s

£15.20, Tanners Wines It's not just a beguiling name for a pretty wine. Good Fleurie has hidden depth, often ageing well for four or five years, sometimes more. Not exactly an iron fist in a velvet glove, but more to it than you might suppose at first sip. This one, from the Colonge family's 7ha of vineyards at the foot of the village, is perfect at two and a half years old: enticing floral and strawberry perfume, succulent summer-pudding fruit, delicate spice and Gamay's min

Waitrose, £14.99 Good Beaujolais can be so enjoyable on its own that even lifelong devotees don't always realise just how versatile the wines of the ten Crus are with food. These are the individual appellations clustered in the north of the region and made, like all Beaujolais, from Gamay but each with its own character and name – Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Brouilly, Régnié among them. The wines of Morgon, more or less at the centre of the ten, are some of the most power

£14.45, Haynes, Hanson & Clark Chiroubles is one of my favourite Beaujolais Crus (the 10 jewels in the Beaujolais crown that go under their own appellation names), but it’s never been one of the most popular in the UK. It’s one of the smaller Crus, admittedly, but I think the problem is more to do with pronunciation: the likes of Morgon and Fleurie look so much easier to say. Apart from being small (under 400 hectares), Chiroubles is the highest, has the highest proportion of

£22, Yapp Brothers Aside from its pretty and easy-to-pronounce name, it's not always obvious why Fleurie should be so much more popular than some of the other Beaujolais Crus (the top ten appellations of the region). Wines like Domaine de Fa are the reason – jewel-bright transparent colour, drifting, blossomy fragrance, red-berry fruit, earth-after-rain mineral freshness and gossamer-fine tannins that give structure to the light body. It's the first release from Antoine and M

£14.49/£12.99, Laithwaites There are other summer reds, but few hit the spot as well as a good Beaujolais and I'm especially pleased to see a beautifully aromatic 2017 Fleurie. Last year was a cruel one for Fleurie's vignerons (and neighbouring Moulin-à-Vent's): for the second year running, hail tore through the vineyards, last year compounded by an accompanying mini tornado (there's more in my Beaujolais blog written after I visited last July). This wine, from vines that esc

I've already written something of my trip to the crus of Beaujolais . Here, in photos and words, is more about the producers and the wines, unrolled in the order in which I visited them. Nicole Chanrion and her son Romain, the eighth generation of this Côte de Brouilly family (above) in their vineyards at Domaine de la Voûte des Crozes. The average age of the vines is 50–60 years – the youngest being 30-years-old, the oldest 106 years – and they grow on the Côte's distinctive

Until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never seriously wanted a vineyard of my own, but I came back from a trip and found myself frenetically googling vineyards for sale in… Who knows whether it will lead to anything, but at least I know now where I’d like to have a vineyard. With its hilly terrain, old vines, low yields, single grape variety and omnipresent threat of hail (see final picture), it’s not the easiest place to be a vigneron (that word identifies the country for you) an

£14.99–£15.49, Hennings Wine, Vineyards of Sherborne Beaujolais is on a roll, as the fashion for big, ripe, oaky blockbusters is replaced by a demand for fresher, brighter reds that are more versatile with food. The ten Beaujolais crus, the wines from the ten best areas of the region – named according to their own individual appellations, such as Fleurie, Brouilly and Moulin-à-Vent – are doing especially well. The quality of the 2015 vintage, one of the best for decades, is a

The famous windmill that gave its name to Moulin-à-Vent, one of the ten crus of Beaujolais I was slightly wary of showing a Beaujolais to the people who’d signed up for one of my Wine Walks at The Wine Gang London Festival at the end of November. I’d told them as we set off, Schott Zwiesel wine glasses in hand, that the aim was to taste some wines I thought they might not try otherwise and maybe one or two others that were simply personal favourites. A Beaujolais-Villages 201

£9.75, Oddbins The 2015 vintage was brilliant for Beaujolais, from straight Beaujolais to the ten appellations in their own right at the top, the so-called crus such as Fleurie and Morgon. Henry Fessy is the only producer to make wine in nine out of the ten, but the 2015 cru wines won’t be ready for shipping until next year. In the meantime, the generous, strawberry-perfumed Beaujolais-Villages (a step up from straight Beaujolais) is here and ready to drink, although even thi

£18.75, Harvey Nichols; £14.75, Hawkshead Wines There are a lot of red wines I don’t want to go near in a heat-wave but this one is a dream if it’s lightly chilled – soft and juicy with strawberry-like fruit and a refreshing twist of cherry kernel and damson skin. It’s made from Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais, and it’s the hero red variety for chilling (though be careful not to numb it completely). It’s not an easy grape to grow outside the Beaujolais region, despite the sunn

£13.50, Cadman Fine Wines I was going to recommend a Rioja from Cadman Fine Wines this week, but I tasted this Morgon on Saturday at a Wine Gang Festival and was bowled over. Along with Moulin-à-Vent, Morgon is the village that produces the deepest, most Burgundian of Beaujolais wines and the Lagneau family has the advantage of a small parcel of 60-year-old vines for this particular wine. It has an alluring perfume of violets and cherries, dark, rich fruit and hints of spice

£14.50, The Wine Society I’m not sure whether I’m killing two birds with one stone or multi-tasking, but this week’s wine doubles up as one of the best to choose if you want a red wine for Chinese New Year and/or one for Valentine’s Day. Saint-Amour (Saint Love) is one of the ten Crus, the top villages, of Beaujolais, so it bears the village name rather than the Beaujolais moniker and is made to stricter rules – on the amount of wine that can be produced, for example. It has

£14.75, Oddbins A wine for opera lovers, Puccini fans, incurable romantics and anyone who likes full, generously fruity, soft-textured reds: this has raspberry and blackberry compote flavours, a hint of liquorice and a freshness that comes from the Gamay grape (better known for Beaujolais). What's in the name? Dame Nellie Melba, an incomparable Mimi in La Bohème, was from the Yarra Valley. Versatile with food, so what about wild boar chops, Italian sausages, or lasagne? La Bo