RP 95+

The 2017 Moulin-a-Vent Les Styx is deep, concentrated and tightly wound, unfurling in the glass with a brooding bouquet of wild plums, crushed cassis, incense, burning embers and licorice that only hints at the complexity to come with bottle age. Medium to full-bodied, elegantly muscular and multidimensional, it's layered and intense, with rich but exquisitely refined structuring tannins and racy girdling acids. Anyone looking for contemporary Beaujolais capable of replicating the feats of longevity realized by the great wines of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s should consider laying down a few bottles.

"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.