Fresh and vibrant with beautiful notes of wild herbs, cherries, wild strawberries, spices, and violets. The whole is carried by the tight, yet soft tannins in a wine with excellent structure.
93 POINTS
James Suckling
“FRAGRANT AND ALIVE”
A medium-bodied red with violets and wild herbs brooding underneath the cherry and wild strawberry fruit. It’s fragrant and alive, held together by crunchy and tight tannins. Excellent structure. Tight at the end. From organically grown grapes. Unfiltered.
About Julien Sunier
For most young winemakers looking to establish themselves in Burgundy, Beaujolais has become a highly attractive region. Partly because the land is significantly cheaper than in Côte d’Or, and partly because Beaujolais has begun to distance itself from the reputation of thin wines with an unmistakable taste of bananas, which Nouveau wine helped give the region through the 1980s and 1990s.
Julien Sunier is one of these young winemakers. He traveled the world to learn about viticulture in New Zealand and winemaking in California before returning home to work side by side with Nicolas Potel in Nuits-Saint-Georges and Jean Claude Rateau in Beaune. It was with these winemakers that he became passionate about the biodynamic approach.
Julien was hired by Mommessin in Beaujolais, who were looking for a winemaker to elevate the quality of their wines. That’s exactly what he did for five years, including rigorously sorting suppliers and instead establishing connections with some of Beaujolais’ best grape growers.
However, Julien wanted more, and his uncompromising approach to wine inevitably led him to establish his own domaine in 2008.
Julien rented three hectares of perfectly located land in the Crus Fleurie, Morgon, and Régnié, which he began to cultivate in an extremely traditional manner, meaning he kept the 60-year-old vines, planted at a density of 10,000 vines per hectare (before the time of tractors…). From the start, everything was grown biodynamically. The grapes are pressed on an old basket press, providing the gentlest and best pressure. The must ferments at low temperatures, around 22-23 degrees, resulting in less color, more delicate tannins, and much more complex wines.
The result is – without modesty, as this is unnecessary – that here you get some of the absolute best Gamay in the world, in quantities that, unfortunately, mean only the very few are fortunate enough to experience it.
