Beaujolais
Gamay, granite and natural wine: the region just south of Burgundy that does far more than young wine.
Beaujolais is the run of hills north of Lyon, tucked just below Burgundy. Plenty of people stopped at Beaujolais Nouveau, the wine of the third Thursday in November, and missed the good bit: ten crus (Morgon, Fleurie, Brouilly, Moulin-à-Vent…) of Gamay on granite, making reds with fruit, grip and a lot more staying power than you’d think.
A big chunk of French natural wine was born here, thanks to Jules Chauvet and Marcel Lapierre’s “gang”, and it’s still one of the places where people work hardest without chemicals or added sulphur. And while it’s Gamay country, there’s Chardonnay too: part of the area is allowed to bottle its whites as Bourgogne.
AOC Beaujolais · AOC Beaujolais-Villages · AOC Brouilly · AOC Morgon · AOC Fleurie
