Domaine Jean Foillard Fleurie Beaujolais, France 2020

VINTAGE : 2020

COUNTRY : France

REGION/APPELLATION : Beaujolais, Fleurie

VARIETALS : Gamay

Jean and Agnès Foillard took over his father’s domaine in 1980, and soon thereafter began to make Kermit Lynch customers very happy. Most of their vineyards are planted on the Côte du Py, the famed slope outside the town of Villié-Morgon and the pride of Morgon. Following the example of traditionalist Jules Chauvet, Jean and three other local vignerons Marcel Lapierre, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Guy Breton, soon hoisted the flag of Chauvet’s back-to-nature movement. Kermit dubbed this clan the Gang of Four, and the name has stuck ever since. The Gang called for a return to the old practices of viticulture and vinification. The end result is a rustic structure, spicy notes, and mineral-laden backbone.

Fresh hay on the nose, wet wheat field and moss. Light and living, charged with herbs, cranberry, and strawberry. Jean’s wines, like the Beaujolais itself, have a way of bringing you squarely home. Each cuvée is unmistakably from here. The wine smells like the earth right before it rains and tastes like the pine forests high on the hills and the wild fruits in the underbrush. With vines unaltered by herbicides or pesticides, and every grape cluster twisted from the vine by hand, this is pure Beaujolais, and there is nothing better.