2024 *Vissoux* Beaujolais

Vignes Centenaires
Beaujolais

Story

Over the past 10 years I have been coming to Beaujolais, France to learn from this special place and from my “Papa” Pierre Marie Chermette. In 2013 I did my first harvest at Vissoux and in 2017 I made my first wine under my Reed label from the Cru Fleurie vineyard. Pierre purchased this Cru along with many others when he became winemaker and took his dad’s place as the next generation. The family originally comes from a town in southern Beaujolais called Saint-Vérand, which is predominantly Nouveau territory. As I write this from his childhood home, looking out the window over a sea of Gamay, I know this is where the real wine journey began for all of them. If you know of Pierre’s incredible talent then you have seen what he can do with Gamay from the best Crus, but if you know his true heart, you know what he can do with Beaujolais. Vissoux is the original family name and the Route du Vissoux is a road that winds down quite a distance near the town centre and is the address to many homes, farms, vineyards and the winery. The family has been living here for 13 generations and if you look close like I have for many years, you can see the detail of their presence in this place. From the stone mason engravings on the walls dating back to the 1600s, to the stories of the multi-generational family members living and contributing to the village, to an old room where you open the door and go back in time and see where they hid the precious items for the church during World War ll. What I’m trying to say is “THEY WERE HERE” and I guess what wine has taught me past the creation of it, is that it’s a language of love, history, connection and above all the key to a full life. So when I thought of coming back this year and making another wine, I decided to dig deeper and stay closer to where it all began and where the heartbeat is. My daughter and I picked our own little parcel of 100 year old Gamay, walking distance from the house. I decided to approach the wine the way I would in Australia, yet still woven with the lessons of Pierre and the region. This place is in me now and there is nothing I can do to change that – and I never would – and I’m lucky to have something so precious mark me for life. I wish I could cast this place in gold so it stays this way forever, but I can’t and as I come back each year the place becomes a new story for my daughter to discover, while I search for the parts I loved so dearly from the past. This wine represents that curious soul in me with an unrealistic dream to become a vigneron and find the deepest meaning in wine at each place I worked. This wine is my love letter to Vissoux.

Tasting Notes

Making this last cuvée was like saying goodbye to someone I loved so much, but had to set free. The ever present tannins taste like a choice that was so vital to the safety and pleasure in every drop, it tastes like autonomy. I grew up in this space and I once was so green; to pick early was the first decision that all that experience gave me the agency to have, I became the lessons from everywhere I worked. The tartness elevates the minerality in the glass, driven by the calcareous/granitic soils that make up this part of Beaujolais. Light and shade create the greatest Gamay, one part you feel so deeply and the other brightens your world like rose-coloured lenses. Chewy, silken mouthfeel followed by the smell of wild strawberry tops and cassis berries on the vine in the hot sun. I have never been one for judging a wine by it’s colour; Pierre would always admire the colour of Gamay while it was being pressed. He would hold the glass up and almost scream, “It’s so beautiful!” After all this time I now realise that some wines taste like their colour, inviting you in from the first glance; that’s Gamay and that’s what makes her so authentically her. She has to be everything to be seen and I see her.