INSIDER'S PICK: 2018 M. LaPIERRE 'RAISINS GAULOIS' GAMAY VIN DE FRANCE $19.99

With November quickly approaching, we are starting to get our turkey signs dusted off for our Thanksgiving wine selections. It never hurts to start making a few choices early before the rush starts on your personal favorites, so start thinking about grabbing a few provisional bottles and stashing them away. The Beaujolais Nouveau frenzy won't start until the week before Thanksgiving, which is just fine for us because it gives us time to remind everyone just how great the REST of Beaujolais is, and how quickly the quality goes up even in small price increases. Marcel Lapierre is one of the legends of Beaujolais, part of Kermit Lynch's 'Gang of Four' that helped to bring the region back from the brink of mediocrity in the 80s. This wine is a unique outlier to many producers in that it walks the line between the Nouveau and Cru designations, so much so that it doesn't even have a designation in their appellation system and has to carry the basic 'Vin de France' name. Most of the fruit here comes from their youngest parcels in the Cru of Morgon, with some other younger vineyard sources elsewhere in Beaujolais. This sees just a touch of carbonic maceration (the process that gives Nouveau its soft grapiness) and ages for a short time in tank to preserve the softness, but still imbues the savory texture of a Cru wine as well as giving it a much better shelf live than a Nouveau.

A bright juicy purple color in the glass without being neon level radiant,the aromas have plenty of fresh pressed grape juice in the nose to pull in most every Nouveau fan, but the second and third whiffs start to pull out the more traditional savory Gamay notes, hints of tart cherry skin and peppery herbs. The palate is super juicy, and thanks to the wine not being filtered there is still plenty of fine tannin texture that helps to pull out a lot of the more savory fruit the longer the wine sits in your mouth. There is also the nice tinge of tartness on the palate that comes from the traditional use of native yeasts, versus the industrial yeasts often inoculated to the mass marketed Beaujolais that gives them the overriding bubble gum character. As tasty as a Cru Beauj but with a few of the potentially harder edges polished off with 500-grit sandpaper, this will be a winner with pretty much everyone at the holiday table.

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