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The world of wines is quite divine. And this isn’t true just because it rhymes. Although the veracity of rhyming couplets is not one to be argued, I can cite you many other such, well, citations, which could prove beyond doubt that wines are divine.

Divinity isn’t the thing that happens in temples alone. That is a miracle. Miracle is also what happens when you come home drunk and late and your wife is sound asleep to notice.

But back to divine occurrences, these can be told by one easy trait: they make your eyes open a good couple of degrees more, like a deer in the headlamps. Except that, unlike the deer, you live to tell a marvellous tale of revelation.

Recently I had the opportunity to be divinely stunned. It happened by medium of wine. Winemaker Pierre-Marie Chermette was in town with his dainty and super-polite wife, Martine.

They were scouring for importers and seemed a bit disappointed when I broke it to them that it might be easier to find a black needle in a black haystack physically the size of India on a moonless night, than to find an importer who could understand their wines well and not argue about the prices. In the defence of the importers,whatever money they ever dream of making is siphoned away by the state authorities under various pretexts as it is.

They live and work in the French region of Beaujolais, not far from the town of Lyon, just south of Burgundy, among the most revered and famed wine region in the world. Beaujolais, sadly, doesn’t quite enjoy the same glamour quotient. It is considered to be quite the banal centre for wines and with their jazzy yet low-on connoisseurship ‘nouveau’ wines, they are considered about as serious as rubberbullets in the world of contract killing.

I too must confess that I have been a bit biased, preferring to skip this grape. In my entire tasting career so far, I can count the serious wines of this region on the fingers of my one hand while
holding a very slippery bar of soap in the other.

The Chermettes, or rather their work with the Gamay grape under the name of Domaine du Vissoux, came across as a real fantasy check then. It slapped the hidden reality across my face: that Gamay is as gifted a grape as any and, when controlled and exploited well, it can give quite awesome wines.

The Beaujolais wines as interpreted by this husband-wife duo (and now joined by their son) are among the best wines I have tried from the region.

They were resplendent in fruit, laced with a nice ripe finish and had all the composure of a serious wine without losing their playful quirky side. Served blind, I would have been tempted to guess them as Pinot Noirs from some new vineyard with great fruity expression.

I could wax eloquent longer but it won’t convert you. in fact, don’t convert just yet but next trip abroad, try and get your paws on any of their stuff: from the basic ‘Les Griottes’ to the higher ‘Fleurie Poncié’ or the Moulin-à-Vent ‘Les Trois Roches’.

Each and every bottle has the potential to not just age but also enliven any evening, every time. I raise my glass to these fantastic and passionate winemakers who have given Gamay a new lease of life.