Prunelle de Navacelle Beaujolais Lantignié AOP 2020

A brand new Beaujolais has arrived in New York. Prunelle de Navacelle is 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 her vines in Régnié and three plots (1.03ha) of old gobelet in Lantignié that have long been rooted in a mix of pink granite, pierre bleues (blueschist) and clay. If her 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. An age is just a number. A long life of weathered experience delivers perspective and character that transfer details into all that we do.

There's a tender line of firmness running through the silken layers of bright floral notes and blue stone, raspberry cream and an old, worn, wooden swing catching sunbeams on the upsway; a fineness of flowing satin thread to the casual laid back body lifted so precisely by gentle saline acid drops, and a bated persistence of brambly framing that carries the very pretty, very delicate fruits across your tongue. Not like any open-top fermentation gamay we’ve ever had, but unlike most semi-carbonic gamays, too, with its prickly little fingers. Only native yeasts are allowed to ferment her pampered grapes with no added sulfur until bottling (24ppm). The wine spends an entire year resting in old 2500L foudre, where the clay and pierre bleues contribute to its structural poise and calming disposition. Biodynamically and regeneratively grown, vegan.