Jean Foillard Beaujolais-Villages 2020 (750ML)

Jean and Agnès Foillard took over his father’s domaine in 1980 – it was 4.5 hectares that came from his parents – with time this slowly grew to the current 18 hectares, including 2 hectares from their son Alex. The domaine has a big, 7 hectare chunk of vines in Beaujolais Villages, plus another hectare in Fleurie – but they are best known for their vines in Morgon – here lies their largest holdings in the crus.

In the 1980s when all-around was a modern vernacular of bubble-gum Beaujolais and Nouveau, Foillard started the domaine in a ‘conventional’ manner but he slowly formulated another path. In the vines he moved to organic methods and in the cuverie he chose a back-to-basics approach inspired by Jules Chauvet. Foillard (together with Marcel Lapierre, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Guy Breton) became one of the ‘Gang of Four,’ a name given to this group of producers by their US importer – Kermit Lynch. Jean says that the quality of the fruit is everything when it comes to winemaking. Sulfur is used very sparingly in the cuverie – if at all – “We ‘play’ with the amount of CO2 gas to help preserve the wines” says Alex. Grapes are cooled right down in a refrigerator so that it is bacterial action that takes preference to the yeast at the start of the long cool carbonic maceration and fermentation – extra CO2 being used, as required. This cooler fermentation can run longer as ‘harsher’ materials are not being extracted as they would at higher temperature. This is done exactly the same for the Beaujolais Villages as it is for their grander cuvées.