HotmailThe grapes of Beaujolais, the spirit of America
For Thanksgiving, why not try the homegrown version? Jon Bonné hunts for domestic gamay noir
 Jon Bonné / MSNBC.com Not all Beaujolais-style wines come from France. |
Seeing how Americans love Beaujolais, especially at Thanksgiving, you’d assume gamay noir, the noble grape of Beaujolais, would find a happy home on these shores too.
Not so.
Domestic gamay noir is a rare curiosity in American wine. It can be found, though in such small quantities that production data is essentially nonexistent. Despite consuming oceans of the French stuff — 2.4 million bottles of nouveau per year alone — Americans have never warmed to homegrown gamay.
Still, a handful of brave (or perhaps foolhardy) vintners remain committed to their mission. Half a dozen intrepid U.S. wineries produce a total of perhaps 2,000 cases annually, mostly in Oregon — which stands to reason, since pinot noir and gamay noir thrive under similar conditions, and Oregon State University first distributed gamay vine cuttings in 1987. The Chehalem winery, in Newberg, Ore., even produces an American version of passetoutgrains, Burgundy’s blend of gamay and pinot noir.
“My feeling early on was, this wine is dangerous because it’s so hard to stop drinking it, you almost have to call the police,” says Steve Edmunds, owner of Edmunds St. John in Berkeley, Calif., which produces about 200 cases of gamay annually. “There’s not another wine that, to me, gives such really simple, pretty, pleasurable perfume and that just invites you to drink it.”
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Edmunds currently stands out among California vintners as the state’s most visible gamay advocate. His vines, planted in 2000, are located in a former pear orchard in remote El Dorado County at 3,400 feet elevation — more than twice as high as Beaujolais’ highest plots.
Michigan's Old Mission Peninsula remains home to at least one gamay noir, from Chateau Grand Traverse in Traverse City, though it’s only available in the Midwest. Across the border, a handful of Ontario vintners produce gamay. New York lays claim to one or two.
Yet the wine world is filled with lore of gamay projects that fizzled. Charles Shaw — who would later sell his name to Fred Franzia’s Bronco Wine Co., which produces so-called Two-Buck Chuck — tried to grow gamay near St. Helena in the Napa Valley, though Shaw’s vines likely weren’t true gamay. (More on that later.)
Beringer, another big California player, ceased bottling gamay in 2002. North Carolina's few scattered plots are now gone.
No ‘sex appeal’
Why hasn’t American gamay flourished?
Perhaps it’s that France’s Beaujolais region has staked its entire reputation on this one grape, and thus made gamay and Beaujolais effectively synonymous.
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Perhaps it’s that Americans’ wine tastes have shifted away from light, fruity wines. Efforts in the 1970s and ’80s to mimic the Beaujolais nouveau craze of young wines from the year's vintage — Montevina Winery, in Plymouth, Calif., even created a “zinfandel nuevo” — are but a distant memory. Myron Redford, owner of Amity Vineyards in Amity, Ore., recalls producing a “pinot noir nouveau” in the 1970s, and has bottled gamay noir since 1988, watching from a distance as big, brawny wines came into fashion.
“All the new winemakers are looking for wines with sex appeal,” he says. “Gamay doesn’t have any sex appeal.”
Or perhaps it’s simple economics. With even the most rarified Beaujolais topping out around $20, what vintner in his or her right mind wouldn’t assign vineyard acreage to more valuable grapes?
“Who said what I do is logical?” retorts Doug Tunnell, owner and vintner at Brick House Vineyards, in Newberg, Ore.
Tunnell, a former CBS journalist, spent vacations during his years based in Europe toiling in Beaujolais vineyards. He planted four acres of his organic vineyard in gamay, producing just 400 cases in 2004, with a mere 150 cases expected this year.
“It's a pursuit of the heart,” he says.
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