RP 95

The 2017 Morgon has turned out brilliantly, unfurling in the glass with aromas of wild plums, black raspberries, grilled meats, violets and spices that only hint at the complexity to come with bottle age. Medium to full-bodied, deep and searingly intense, its concentrated core of fruit is framed by racy acids and beautifully powdery tannins. Long and penetrating, this will richly reward bottle age.

"I wish I could believe, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that the laws of nature are benevolent," observed Fabien Duperray, "but as a vigneron, one's experience is different." Once again ravished by hail - only his holdings in Morgon were spared - Duperray's Beaujolais domaine produced, after sorting, on average somewhat less than 10 hectoliters per hectare; so, if he were a little jaded, his perspective would be easy to understand. Those derisory yields were then processed by hand, their rachis cut out on the sorting table while retaining their pedicels, and any hail-impacted berries were discarded. Matured not in wood but in glass, and for two winters, the ensuing wines are deep, concentrated and built to age, underpinned by elegant but muscular tannins of notable finesse. "I could have made something more immediate and flattering, but I preferred to give them the chance to become great with time," Duperray explains. Once again, Duperray has crafted singular wines that exist in a context that's entirely their own, and if they fulfill all their youthful promise with bottle age - as I believe they will - there's no doubt that they will change how the Beaujolais is perceived forever.