Jean Foillard ‘Morgon Côte du Py’

Jean Foillard ‘Morgon Côte du Py’ –   This is an unforgiving powerhouse; chasmic and meaty with a brooding structure – drink it with a fork and knife. It is not interested in taking any prisoners. A wine that much like Cinderella Man, comes out swingin’, it peppers its opposition with heady red fruit aromas. Launching an assault of wild strawberry and raspberry, it follows with powerful black cherry and dark plum hooks. Subsequently ambushing one’s palette with staunch herbal notes and a resolute savoury backbone, it does not let up. Finally, as one’s back palette hits the canvas, aftershocks of liquorice and smoke render one completely inert. Despite the potential aggression of Beaujolais that this cuveé is yearning to represent, it does so with grace and transparency.

Post-WW2 sensibilities, i.e mass production and commercialism, ill-affected the Beaujolais region, amongst many others. Any and all (chemical) means were attaining high-volume yields and by the 1970s, Beaujolais appellations were producing mere bubblegum juice. However, a handful of natural wine anarchists began to stand defiantly against the rising tides of commercialism This group is known as the Gang of Four. Jean Foillard cemented his philosophies, under the watchful tutelage of Jules Chauvet. Consequently, he and his wife Agnés started their domain in the early 1980s and returned to honest wine-making, undeterred by their peers. The vines are grown organically and to this day, there are no pumps to move the wine at any stage. They are manually harvesting the grapes and are fermenting spontaneously with native yeasts.

Jean Foillard ‘Morgon Côte du Py’ – originating from a Morgon microclimate where the vineyards are growing on the crumbling schists soil of an extinct volcano. Ultimately, Foillard is producing a fable in a bottle; moreover, a tirelessly theatrical expression of Beaujolais.