retour
« The name of Marcel Lapierre became a symbol of the revival of “serious” wine in the Beaujolais. The domain itself existed be-fore the Revolution, but took its modern form after phylloxera under Marcel Lapierre’s grandfather. It was among the first in the region to bottle its own wine. Marcel Lapierre initiated the move away from the image of Beaujolais as following semi-in-dustrial techniques for making cheap and cheerful wine. Locat-ed in the town of Villié-Morgon, the domain is divided into two separate sets of buildings; we tasted the wines in a courtyard surrounded by buildings constructed just after the Revolution. Today the domain is run by Mathieu Lapierre, who is continuing his father’s focus on natural winemaking. The domain is com-pletely in Morgon, but some of the production from young vines is declassified to Vin de France; “Young Gamay is very produc-tive,” explains Mathieu. When the year is sufficiently good there is a Vieilles Vignes bottling; this is the cuvée Marcel Lapierre. Sulfur is always low, but some cuvées are bottled entirely with-out any. There’s always a difference. “There’s no rule, it de-pends on the vintage whether the wine with or without sulfur has more generosity,” Mathieu says.
My impression most often is that keeping sulfur down increases expression of fruit puri-ty. Certainly the house style is towards a certain linear purity of fruits, quite tight and precise when young, and needing some time to open out. »
