Domaine Dupeuble Beaujolais Rouge 2023

"Avec toutes mes amitiés Beaujolaises," “with all my Beaujolais friendship,” is how Ghislaine Dupeuble signs her emails. That detail succinctly summarizes her warmth and the essence of her family’s wines, which exude just what her signature suggests.

The 2023 vintage in Beaujolais presented one of the most bountiful years of late, with an abundance of bright plump fruit. Dupeuble’s Rouge is thirst-quenching and tangy with loads of violet and réglisse, aromas you might expect from fruit that grows so close to the Rhône. One glass of this simply made and easy-drinking Beaujolais will provide centuries’ worth of tradition, generosity, paysan culture and friendship.

In the hamlet of Le Breuil, deep in the southern Beaujolais and perched above a narrow creek, the Domaine Dupeuble has been running almost continuously since 1512. The name of the domaine has changed just three times in its history, most recently when the last heir, Anna Asmaquer, married Jules Dupeuble in 1919. Anna’s son Paul, and her grandchildren Ghislaine and Stéphane Dupeuble, manage the domaine. Kermit Lynch first met Ghislaine and Stéphane’s father, Damien, for lunch in Paris in the late 1980s, and thus began the annual tradition of blending the KLWM Beaujolais Nouveau.

Tradition runs deep in the family, but each generation has also managed to add something new, including increasing the property. Today it is comprised of one hundred hectares, about forty percent of which is consecrated to vineyards. Strong advocates of the lutte raisonnée approach to vineyard work, they tend their vines without the use of any chemicals or synthetic fertilizers. The vineyards, planted primarily to Gamay, face Southeast, South, and Southwest, and about two thirds of the property is on granite-based soil. The grapes are harvested manually and vinified completely without SO2. The wines are not chaptalized, filtered, or degassed and only natural yeasts are used for the fermentation. The wines of Dupeuble represent some of the best values in the Beaujolais today and are widely regarded for their very high quality and eminently reasonable price. 

"The Dupeuble Beaujolais towers majestically over every other red on the market today yet retains the quaffable ‘légèreté’ we demand from this monumental appellation. At the same time, how can one ignore its eyeball-riveting color, its super concentrated body engorged with blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, olallieberries, boysenberries, cinnamon, cherry pit, violets, petunias, red currants, black currants and graham crackers? There is there, one might say, there. Multi-layered layers of sublime simplicity, a blood-boiling aftertaste, this is a palate hummer." — Kermit Lynch