It was haunting. Mysteriously darting here and there while all my senses reached hungrily out for each nuance, chasing them like glints of light radiating from a gem. A cloud of delicate sensations ran through my brain then lofted away. Nothing overwhelmed me, but its teasing, tempting and almost impish personality became addicting. I found myself coming back to it night after night as there was something so compelling about its vulnerable, yet soaring complexity. Like a seemingly weightless ballet dancer, every move floated through my senses.

There’s a pretty good chance you’ll hate it, or won’t get it, but I find myself pulling the cork from a bottle of this wine several times a week because I have found few wines so satisfying at the dinner table.

The wine: 2004 Beaujolais, L’Ancien, Vielles Vignes, Terres Dorees from Jean-Paul Brun. Just writing about this wine makes me salivate.

It’s not big. It’s not powerful. It’s not pointy. It is simply delicious. No juicy-fruity Duboeuf here, but a wine with a strangely powerful delicacy. The bouquet entices not attacks and on the palate it dances, challenging your palate to follow its lead - if you have the time and inclination. Considering the under $15 price tag, a wine that can lead your senses in so many directions is a staggering bargain.

Never passing 12% alcohol and produced without manipulation, the delicacy of such a wine is sure to disappoint palates trained on the hyper-extracted and manipulated wines of today, but if you are getting a little bored with indistinguishable wines from unidentifiable places, maybe, just maybe, you can open your palate and mind to something new. Actually, it’s not new; it’s very, very old. We all just forgot.

Beaujolais , L’Ancien, Vielles Vignes, Terres Dorees is imported by Louis/Dressner