The ten Beaujolais crus, and the two tiers below them

Three tiers, one grape, and the difference is mostly arithmetic. Beaujolais, Beaujolais-Villages and the ten named crus are all Gamay. What separates them is which slopes the vines sit on and how hard the rules squeeze the crop: 60 hectolitres per hectare at the bottom of the ladder, 56 at the top.

The oddity is that the top tier does not say Beaujolais anywhere on the front. A bottle of Morgon or Fleurie carries only its own name. That is the main reason so many people who are sure they dislike Beaujolais have only ever met the bottom rung.

Three tiers, and the yield behind them

Those three yield figures are the whole system in miniature. Fewer litres per hectare means fewer bunches per vine, riper fruit and more of it in the glass — no ageing rules required.

The ten crus

Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Régnié and Saint-Amour. Brouilly is the biggest and the most southerly: roughly 1,200 hectares across six communes, and more than eight million bottles a year on its own. Régnié is the newcomer, promoted to cru status only in 1988.

If you want to know what Gamay can do with a few years behind it, start with Morgon. Its Côte du Py slope of decomposed blue stone gives the firmest, most structured wines of the ten, and with age they turn towards kirsch and stone-fruit kernel rather than fading — the opposite of what most people expect from the region.

Nouveau is a rule, not a tier

Beaujolais Nouveau is released at one minute past midnight on the third Thursday of November, a date the INAO fixed in 1985. It may only be made from Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages: the ten crus are barred from it outright. The wine that made the region world-famous is legally excluded from its best vineyards, which is a fair summary of Beaujolais's last fifty years.

The mistake worth not making

Serving a cru straight from the fridge. Basic Beaujolais is happiest at 12–13°C (54–55°F) and genuinely improves with twenty minutes in the fridge door. A cru wants 14–15°C (57–59°F); take it much below that and the tannin tightens, the perfume shuts down and you have paid cru money for a cold, sour drink. Our serving temperature guide sets out the bands for the rest.

One footnote for label readers: Beaujolais-Villages arrived by decree in April 1950, and the trick — a named middle tier carved out of a big regional appellation — has been borrowed all over France since, from Côtes du Rhône-Villages to Mâcon-Villages. Beaujolais-Villages is no longer even a separate appellation: it is a mention inside AOC Beaujolais.