2019 Beaujolais Vieilles Vignes, Domaine Boulon

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 satin-smooth texture – and hiding behind all this delicious drinkability there’s enough backbone for it to keep two or three years. But why would you?

Drink it lightly chilled with tuna steak, salmon, charcuterie, terrines, cold meats, roast quail, substantial salads, hummus, chick pea stews… I could bore for Britain on the subject of how versatile good Beaujolais is with food. 13%