Nicole Chanrion and her son Romain couldn’t help but gleefully finish each other’s sentences during a recent visit to their domaine at the foot of Mont Brouilly—they were too excited to share their winemaking philosophies and incredible terroir right outside their domaine’s door. While the Chanrions own parcels all across these slopes and vinify them separately, they blend them in the end to create, as Romain says, an orchestra full of beautiful harmony. Stony, faintly spicy, and elegant, it’s the kind of bottle you want to pop open again as soon as the first is drained.

Near Fleurie’s border with neighboring Moulin-à-Vent, Les Moriers had been reputed since the nineteenth century for producing wines with a rare mingling of both crus’ best qualities. At their best, these reds are floral and elegant (Fleurie) while retaining a deep, stony foundation (Moulin-à-Vent). Today, the Chignard family represents not only our original source of Fleurie, but also our longest-running relationship in the Beaujolais. Showcasing notes of brambly fruit, violet, stone, and smoke, their classic bottling of Les Moriers offers so much to love.

One of my favorite movies last year, One Battle After Another centers around the decades-long ebb and flow of modern-day revolutionaries who call themselves the French 75. I’ve been thinking about this movie a lot lately, but particularly while enjoying a glass of the Thillardon siblings’ Chénas.
     Three decades ago, in his seminal essay “Revolution in the Beaujolais” about Morgon’s trailblazing producers, Kermit wrote, “There are stirrings of momentous changes in the Beaujolais. There are four winemakers who don’t like herbicides or pesticides in their vineyards, who don’t like to chaptalize or de-gas or filter their wines. And they hate SO?!” But while their methods were seen as avant-garde or fringe back then, their wines have become iconic and embraced by the mainstream over the years. The revolutionaries won. So if you’re in search of vignerons who continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the Beaujolais today, who do you turn to?
     The four Thillardon siblings—three brothers and one sister—are homesteaders. They raise livestock, grow their own vegetables, and make wine from the gnarled, untrained Gamay vines that grow behind their home. Vibrations, which is a blend of Chénas terroirs, is a lively and fresh Beaujolais, with bright red fruit and silky tannins. Vive la révolution!