Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Brun's dependably superb 2018 Beaujolais l’Ancien offers up notes of rose petals, cherries and raspberries, followed by a medium to full-bodied, fleshy palate built around satiny tannins and juicy acids. It's a beautifully gourmand but precise wine, demonstrating the strengths of this vintage in the limestone soils of the southern Beaujolais.
 
100% Gamay. L'Ancien comes from Jean Paul's oldest vines--hence the name of the wine--in his home village of Charnay in the southern Beaujolais. They range in age from 40 to 60 years old and are planted on slopes sporting the area's signature sandy clay-limestone soils, featuring the particular local "dorée" or "golden" limestone that is laden with iron. These older vines have always been farmed organically and harvested by hand and yield small, thick-skinned Gamay berries. As for all Terres Dorées reds, the vinification is traditional Burgundian. The grapes are rigorously sorted and destemmed, crushed and fermented with indigenous yeasts in concrete vats. The wine is aged in concrete until May-June after the vintage.