Domaine Chasselay Fleurie 'III', 2019

This is the southern half of Beaujolais, the place where affluent Lyonnais families built country estates a short ride outside of their city. The architecture is frequently grand and regal, the villages are often darling postcards, and the wine is ostensibly simple—all straight Beaujolais, sans a hyphenated villages designation, let alone that of a cru. The land here is flatter, the soil richer, and mixed with Beaujolais's northern granite there is a good amount of limestone (which can make for fine whites). The average Gamay tends to be lighter than its sibling to the north, and for sure it is less expensive.

But that is the average. Fabien Chasselay, his sister Claire, and their father Jean-Gilles make any number of cru Beaujolais from rented parcels, but they take every bit as much pride in their own old vines in Chatillon d'Azergues. They have farmed organically since 2000, received certification in 2006, harvest later than most, and they have always undertaken fermentations with indigenous yeast and without sulfur additions (the latter is done lightly at bottling). It's worth noting too that Fabien did a part of his training at Domaine Bruno Clavelier in Vosne-Romanée, and he came to favor a degree of de-stemming rather than doing Beaujolais' traditional, 100% whole cluster fermentations. The result of all of this is Beaujolais of unusual succulence and pithy fruit.

The domaine owns 30 acres of vines in the Pierres Dorees. Fifteen of those acres, parsed among many parcels, are reserved for the cuvee Quatre Saisons. Some parcels grow in limestone soils, others in granitic soils. The average vine age is fifty-five years old. Fermentation is done with roughly half the grapes de-stemmed, and the other half kept whole on the clusters. The wine is raised for roughly four months in huge, old wooden casks, and production averages 1,650 cases annually.