An impressive example of this elevated cru. The texture of the wine is beautifully soft and silky, with integrated, lightly gripping tannic structure. An elegant Beaujolais that bears the complexity of its old-vine origin. Find out more.
About the Wine
A special cuvée made only in exceptional years, of which 2023 was deemed to be in this part of Beaujolais. 'Champ de Cour' is a single small parcel at just 0.4 hectares that ordinarily serves as a component of 'La Vigne de Mon Pere'. Here we see a hyper-specific expression of terroir, this parcel singled out to make its own unique wine owing to its sandy decomposed granite soils having a high content of the manganese minerals - something closely associated with fine structure and ageability of wines from this cru.
The most delicately-extracted of all her Moulin-à-Vent wines, here we have beautifully elevated floral aromas coiling around spices of peppercorn and capsicum flesh, with a pronounced petrichor minerality. Sleek and plush across the palate, pretty red and black fruits tail into an elegant finish of iron and wet stones.
From massal selection vines between 40 and 70 years of age, grapes were placed in large concrete tanks so go through a semi-carbonic maceration over a fortnight, the weight of the grapes at the top crushing those at the bottom of the tank and with just a couple of punch-downs towards the end of fermentation. It was then pressed off, half into old 220-litre barrels and half into fibreglass cuve to rest for 10 months, with no filtration before bottling. Only 1300 bottles made in total.
About Elisa Guerin
Unlike many of the better-known dynasties of natural winemakers in Beaujolais, Elisa Guerin is not being passed the baton of established family tradition, she is forging a new path. The Guerins, based in Chénas, farm 4 hectares of vines across the Moulin-à-Vent and Chiroubles appellations that have been in the family since the early 1900s. Elisa, a trained agronomist, is the first generation to break out to pursue her vision of chemical-free viticulture over these sites and natural methods in the cellar. Very much at the beginning of what promises to be a fascinating journey, in 2019 Elisa began the long process of converting the land, with the long-term goal being to have the estate completely turned over to organics. With a strong focus on environmental impact, the plan extends to diversifying the landscape and encouraging biodiversity with the planting of hedgerows and fruit trees, and to experiment with new methods of fertilisation, using plant-based extracts and treatments. There will also be some white grapes popping up alongside all that Gamay, with plantings of Aligoté and Melon de Bourgogne. She has begun with a small production of Beaujolais-Villages, from 50 year-old vines in conversion - the first to be bottled under her own name - as well as a couple of other cuvées from a mixture of small parcels in Moulin-à-Vent, plus a wine from the higher elevation cru of Chiroubles. As the reins are, piece by piece, handed over from her father, Philippe, Elisa is also changing the way the wines are vinified; fermenting only with native yeasts, raising the wines in concrete rather than barrels and scrupulously minimising any additions, seeking to create expressions of Gamay that reflect this varied terroir of granite, limestone and schist. The wines themselves are a real labour of love and make for compelling representations of the region; a precise balance of elegance, concentration and purity of fruit, with an underlying mineral aspect. They are, above all, a real pleasure to drink and we’re so happy to be bringing them all to the UK for the first time. We can’t help but feel Elisa is destined for great things.
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