Prunelle de Navacelle Beaujolais Lantignié AOP 2020

If Prunelle de Navacelle’s vines were people, some would have already survived painful lost love, others facing midlife crisis and the uncertainty of retirement, while still more would be celebrating their 90th year of life. A progressive voice in the emerging Beaujolais-Lantignié region, she’s transferring the 500 years of vinification experience of her family’s estate of Château Basty into her own work, taking a holistically regenerative and biodynamic approach to farming vines in Régnié and three plots (1.03ha) of old gobelet in Lantignié rooted in a mix of pink granite, blueschist and clay. Harvest is gentle, done by hand. In the cellar, bunches undergo a semi-carbonic maceration before a very slow pressing in an old wooden vertical press. Native yeasts carry out fermentation and wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered. Only a small amount of sulfur is added, just at bottling, and only if necessary for stabilization. This wine is a delicious introduction to her work. There's a tender line of firmness running through the silken layers of floral notes and blue stone, and a bated persistence of bramble fruits and savory black-olive-like tones. Organically grown, biodynamically grown, low-intervention/natural wine, vegan.