Château de Belleverne Le Cru des Amoureux, AOP Saint Amour is a deliciously complex wine, offering fruity aromas of wild strawberries and flavours of berries, layered with savoury liquorice and hints of peppery spice. Perfectly paired with pâté, roasted chicken, or soft cheeses, this wine provides a silky lasting finish that will leave you wanting more. Enjoy lightly chilled for optimal taste.

About the Producer

Like all good stories, that of Boutinot France is both long and a little bit complicated! Boutinot began as a tiny importer in 1980, specialising in French wines. Paul Boutinot himself began by personally selecting the wines from France, back in the UK he would unload the trailer by hand. And deliver the crates of wines to customers himself. But good things grow and by the end of the decade we had become a bigger and better company. A company that not only sought out great wines but made them too. After 10 years later, Boutinot France started in January 1990. The first office was in the middle of the vines in Julienas; perfectly located to navigate the Beaujolais and Macon regions on the quest to make beautiful wines..

Today, Boutinot’s French office has recently relocated to Macon, and has over 20 employees who take care of production across the whole of France, covering fresh whites and rosés from Gascony, mineral wines from Burgundy, and joyful varietal wines from Languedoc among others. We don’t use any single model to source our wines; instead, a combination of sources are used, from large-scale, high-quality co-ops to small, family growers and single domaines, as well as our own vineyards in Cairanne and Saint-Vérand. Drawing on the expertise of our four winemakers and a network of partner growers, we seek to deliver the highest quality-to-price ratio possible for every wine.

Vineyard and Winery

Bequeathing its name from Amor, a Roman Legionnaire who took refuge in the area after refusing to fight the Christians, and long singet tce associated with love and romance, Saint-Amour, with its mixture of granite, schist and clay produces both soft, floral, fruit driven wines and more powerful complex wines that can be aged for up to 5 years. For the Bataillard family, owners of Château de Belleverne, the acquisition of Saint-Amour vineyards sealed their presence in each of the four most northerly Beaujolais Cru; they also own plots in Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, and Juliénas as well as the northern reaches of Beaujolais Villages, making 36ha in all. Their south-east facing Saint-Amour plots are made up of schist and shale and slope gently down from statue of La Madone in the village itself. As with all Belleverne’s Cru vineyards, vines are at least 50 years of age, with yields below the appellation maximum, and are managed following ‘High Environmental Value’ (HVE) principles; a certification Belleverne gained in 2018 to ‘a guarantee that the pressure applied to the environment by farming practices (on air, water, soil, climate, biodiversity and landscape) is kept to a minimum.’ Hand-harvested grapes are immediately cooled as they arrive at the cellar, following significant investment in cooling equipment. Winemakers (and brothers) Didier and Alain increasingly de-stem the majority of the harvest to gain complexity without hard tannins. They prefer a semi-carbonic maceration, having mastered the technique of cooling the grapes in each of their concrete tanks to slow the process down. A slower fermentation, of between 10 and 13 days for each separately vinified parcel, together with twice daily remontage to fully submerge the cap and optimise the extraction of fruit and flavours, achieves a greater expression of fruit character in the final wine. This Saint-Amour is exclusive to Boutinot; having worked with Samantha Bailey since 2014 the Bataillard’s now allow her crucial ‘first access’ to their cellar allowing her to taste each and every cuvée before anyone else. Samantha is undeniably passionate when selecting blends but when it comes to Saint-Amour – the village where she was married – the final choice of the three cuves for ‘Le Cru des Amoureux’ which will achieve the perfect balance between exuberant fruit and underlying structure and definition, is a very personal endeavour.