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Caves de Julinas-Chaintr Villages Cuve Six, Beaujolais-Villages, France 2018 (from 9. 95, nywines. co. uk; eynshamcellars. com; butlers-winecellar. co. uk) It would be very hard to find a red wine region in the world offering better value for money than Beaujolais at the moment. I dont just mean that the land north of Lyon provides some of the most reliably drinkable red wines you can find for not much more than a fiver. Wines that are relatively light and, with their soft to non-existent tannin and bright berry thirst-quenching juiciness, are the ideal incarnation of that onomatopoeic wine adjective, gluggable. Chillable, wines such as Tesco Beaujolais Rouge or Sainsburys House Beaujolais (both exactly 5). The region also regularly hits a thirst-quenching, prettily-scented spot for a couple of quid more, with villages wines, from superior vineyards, such as Morrisons The Best Beaujolais Villages (6. 50 until 4 October), Waitrose Blueprint Beaujolais-Villages 2018 (7. 99) or, in super-succulent, vivid, finger-staining, fresh-off-the-bush style, the Cuve Six made by a 170-strong co-operative of local growers. Co-op Chiroubles, Beaujolais, France 2019 (10, The Co-op) As in Burgundy, the northerly neighbour with which it is sometimes bracketed (and more often unfavourably compared with), Beaujolais really starts to shine once you are dealing with wines made in a specific village or cru. French wine law allows 10 Beaujolais villages to put their names on the label, each with a slightly different take on the combination of gamay grape and granitic soils. Pound for pound, these cru wines are often even better value than the straight Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages wines and theyre certainly in a different bang-for-buck league than the equivalent quality level of Burgundian pinot noir, or the syrahs of the northern Rhne a little further south. Certainly, I can think of very few wines that provide as much unmediated pleasure
