£17.89, TheDrinkShop.com
This Burgundian Pinot Noir is both unusual and classic. Classic because it has the sweet, delicately spicy, red-cherry fruit, forest-floor, earth-fresh mineral notes and fine texture of a Burgundian Pinot Noir. Unusual because it's from 18 hectares of vineyard in the Beaujolais region – not in the north among the famous granite and schist soils of Crus such as Moulin-à-Vent, Morgon and Saint-Amour, but in the south, source of simple Beaujolais.
What brought Maison Louis Latour prospecting down here in 2010 and planting in 2012 was the limestone, the golden limestone soils that give their name, Les Pierres Dorées, to the area. Pinot Noir is never happier than when in limestone (in contrast, Gamay, the Beaujolais grape, gives its best in those granites and schists to the north). The climate is good, too: southerly warmth freshened by altitudes of 280–380m.
I drank the 2017 (only the third vintage) with Gressingham duck breast lightly flavoured with five spice and deglazed with a little LBV port and with sauteed mushrooms, but it would also go well with lamb steaks and cutlets, pork chops or char-grilled salmon. 13%.
Pinot Noir Les Pierres Dorées 2017, Coteaux Bourguignons, Burgundy, France
£17.89, TheDrinkShop.com
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