Gamay

Gamay was banished from Burgundy in 1395 by Philip the Bold, who called it a very bad and disloyal plant and ordered it uprooted from the Côte d'Or. It retreated south to the granite hills of Beaujolais, where it has been ever since, and where it turns out to be perfectly suited.

The grape gives a pale, low-tannin, high-acid red with raspberry, cherry, redcurrant and violet. What makes Beaujolais distinctive is not only the grape but the technique: carbonic maceration, in which whole uncrushed bunches ferment in a carbon-dioxide-filled vat and begin fermenting inside the intact berry. This produces the banana, bubblegum and kirsch notes associated with the region, and extracts colour without tannin.

Beaujolais Nouveau, released on the third Thursday of November weeks after harvest, was a marketing triumph in the 1970s and 1980s that very nearly destroyed the region's credibility. It reduced serious wine country to a novelty.

The ten crus tell a different story. Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Brouilly and the rest are made with longer maceration and less carbonic influence, from old vines on granite and schist, and they are structured, mineral wines that age for a decade and more. Moulin-à-Vent in particular takes on a Burgundian depth with time.

It is also grown in the Loire, in Switzerland and in Ontario, and a small revival is under way in Burgundy itself.

Like Chardonnay, it is a natural cross of Pinot Noir with Gouais Blanc — a sibling of the grape that exiled it.

The cru hierarchy repays learning, because the differences are real. Brouilly and Régnié are the lightest and most immediately charming; Fleurie and Chiroubles are floral and perfumed; Morgon and Moulin-à-Vent are the most structured, capable of a decade or more, with Moulin-à-Vent's manganese-rich granite producing the firmest wines of all.

Carbonic maceration is a spectrum rather than a switch. Full carbonic gives the banana-and-bubblegum character of Nouveau; semi-carbonic, where the weight of the fruit crushes the lower layers and conventional fermentation proceeds beneath, is what most serious producers use; and some cru producers destem entirely and make Gamay much as they would Pinot Noir.

It is one of the very few reds that genuinely benefits from being served cool — around thirteen degrees — and one of the most food-flexible wines on any list, largely because low tannin and high acid quarrel with almost nothing.