Beaujolais

Domaine Marcel Lapierre

• Fruit and careful cellar work: Lapierre brings intact Gamay bunches into a carbonic maceration, then finishes Morgon’s fermentation and maturation in used barrels. The purpose of the barrel stage is natural clarification, not new-oak flavour. Close temperature and microbiological monitoring support the domaine’s aim of clear, expressive fruit with few additions.
• A pioneer of natural Morgon: Le Monde describes Marcel Lapierre as a pioneer of Morgon’s natural wines: his work helped bring recognition to wines made with few inputs before this approach spread.
• The decisive meeting with Jules Chauvet: In 1981, Jules Chauvet encouraged Marcel Lapierre to rethink his approach: vinifying without added yeasts, allowing indigenous yeasts to work, and without adding sulphur at this stage.
• Two bottlings to distinguish: Mathieu, then Camille, continued this work. Their Morgon is bottled in two forms: a lightly sulphured lot and a “mise nature” without additions.

Château Thivin - famille Geoffray

• Zaccharie: selection and depth: Zaccharie is a selection of Côte de Brouilly parcels, then of the best barrels after a year of maturation. It combines ripe red and dark fruit, floral notes, a fleshy palate and fine tannins, with the depth to develop for more than a decade. Marguerite offers a different wine altogether: a Chardonnay white.
• Joining the Geoffray family: In 1877, Zaccharie Geoffray and Marguerite Bernard bought Thivin at auction, with fewer than two hectares of vines.
• Two first names on the labels: The estate pays tribute to them with two cuvées: “Zaccharie”, a Côte de Brouilly, and “Marguerite”, a Chardonnay white born with the first harvest of this grape in 2004. The two names recall the couple who brought Thivin into the Geoffray family.

Château des Jacques

• Maceration and oak for a structured Gamay: Clos de Rochegrès undergoes two to three weeks of maceration, with punch-downs and pump-overs, then ten months in oak barrels. This is a substantial, cellar-worthy Moulin-à-Vent: generous in body yet fresh, with the château giving it around twenty years of ageing potential.
• A vineyard brought together: When Amédée Rousseau bought the château in 1924, only two hectares were vinified there. Over the next three years, he bought Moulin-à-Vent vines from seventy families: the estate was built by bringing together many small properties.
• A new winemaker: Julie Pitoiset took charge of winemaking in 2023, after a career that had taken her from Burgundy to Tasmania.

Domaine Jules Desjourneys - Fabien Duperray

• Time and fermentation before oak: Fabien Duperray puts the emphasis on healthy fruit, controlled fermentation and patient maturation. In his interview with Jamie Goode, he described moving away from barrels towards concrete and glass after 2014, seeking wines that can open earlier without losing the ability to age.
• A wine refused approval: In 2008, in his second vintage, the wine from Fabien Duperray’s Fleurie vineyards was refused appellation approval.
• A refusal becomes a cuvée name: He called it “L’Interdit”: the refusal became the bottle’s name. The wine would be presented as Vin de France, without Fleurie AOC.

Domaine Jean Foillard

Beaujolais · Morgon

• Côte du Py, the Morgon signature: Morgon Côte du Py became Jean Foillard’s emblematic cuvée during the rise of Beaujolais’s natural-wine movement. The 2023 combines plum with earthy and stony notes, finely powdery tannins and prolonged development in the glass.
• A shared change in winemaking: Importer Kermit Lynch called Foillard, Marcel Lapierre, Guy Breton and Jean-Paul Thévenet Morgon’s “gang of four”. Inspired by Jules Chauvet, they championed natural fermentations and limited intervention, placing how the grapes became wine at the heart of their renewal of the region.
• Whole bunches and used oak: Côte du Py undergoes whole-bunch fermentation and matures in used oak barrels. This is a structured, ageworthy Morgon with a supple texture, distinct from the estate’s concrete-aged Beaujolais-Villages.