Description
“Beaujolais icon Jean Foillard is among France’s most revered vignerons … there may be no more consistently fine red wines in all of France than Foillard’s Morgons and Fleurie.” Rare Wine Company
“.. it’s an open secret that this is one of the region’s finest as well as most consistent addresses .. his bottles are typically models of aromatic purity and graceful aging. I regularly purchase these wines for my own cellar and warmly recommend them to readers.” William Kelley, The Wine Advocate, May 2020
Jean Foillard is one of the great winemakers in France and, in his hands, wine is no ordinary thing. Jean and his wife Agnès live just outside the small village of Ville-Morgon in a large, old white farmhouse that they have renovated beautifully. Jean started making wine in 1982; first at the family domaine then after a few years he branched out on his own and started to rent and buy his own holdings (including a large, perfect parcel on the Côte du Py: the most celebrated climat in all of Beaujolais).
Jean Foillard is a fervent supporter, like Marcel Lapierre, of the natural wine growing and making methods of the legendary Jules Chauvet. This includes keeping whole clusters of grapes in vats for 2 to 3 weeks at a low temperature before fermentation, using only natural yeast, no pumping, no fining and no filtration. Furthermore he ages his wine in barrels brought from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti….. the results are sublime. He is a cult wine hero amongst the very many young, free-spirited vignerons in France who are now looking back to nature to make fine wine.
Morgon from Foillard shows wonderfully fresh, pure aromas of cherries and blackberries combined with a haunting, otherworldly complexity that is distinctly Foillard. The word diaphanous is perfect to describe the aromas of his wines; you can almost smell through them. In the mouth, again there’s a wonderful transparency. Crunchy, fresh fruit is complemented by a satiny, silky structure and some delicate spice. Elegant, soft, smooth and pure, in many ways these wines have more in common sensually with Chambolle-Musigny than regular, ‘run of the mill’ Beaujolais. A must try wine for wine lovers who have not yet discovered this treasure of ‘true’ Beaujolais.
2022 is a vintage full of the sumptuous fruit and silky texture that Jean is always able to harness, the vintage providing fine concentration but the wines still show vibrant jellied red fruit, very attractive floral and spice aromas and caressingly silky mouthfeel – as always they all offer delicious succulence as young wines, and as always they are perfectly balanced.
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