Brun’s 2008 Beaujolais Rose d’Folie smells of red raspberries, flowers, and greenery; offers a polished, bright, tart, saline, berry-fresh and melon-luscious palate impression; and finishes with refreshing and invigorating reprises of the aforementioned. This represents a vast improvement on most of the numerous Beaujolais roses I have tasted. Enjoy it over the next 6-9 months. Jean-Paul Brun – like Pierre Chermette – made his reputation in Beaujolais the hard way (as if making a reputation anywhere in this region is easy!) by taking a vocal position on quality and crafting exemplary wines with the lowest regional classification, plain “Beaujolais,” from chalk-clay soils in the south. Only then was he able to acquire fruit and eventually properties in the northern, granite-based crus, a collection which now forms a quartet (whose performance in vintage 2007 I missed and Brun did not volunteer to re-stage this spring). Chalk clay soils in the south of Beaujolais distinguish not only the eponymous appellation but also explain the prevalence of Chardonnay – most bottled as Bourgogne Blanc rather than Beaujolais Blanc, and of which Brun’s is not only the best, but one I rate among the world’s handful of consistently finest Chardonnay values.Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334 8191