Marcel Lapierre

Mathieu and Camille Lapierre have become almost as renowned as their father, Gang of Four member Marcel, was back in the day. Taking over at the helm of a domaine with such a prestigious reputation has got to be a tough call, yet Mathieu and Camille have not only managed to do so with apparent ease, they’ve become figureheads for their own cohort of Beaujolais winemakers in much the same way as their father was a pathfinder for the previous generation.
The family holdings are all based in Morgon, and all 14 hectares of vineyards have been farmed organically since the early 1980s, at the insistence of the pioneering Marcel. Neither member of the current generation is as dogmatic about winemaking techniques as one might imagine – the aim is to extract flavour and structure from the whole berries as gently as possible before they’re pressed (typically at around the three-week mark) to continue the fermentation, then the wines are aged for a few months, mostly in old barrels. Sulphite use, as one might expect, is minimal. The main Morgon cuvée comes in two versions, one, marked with a ‘N’, has no sulphur at all, while the bottle marked ‘S’ is lightly sulphited before bottling. The nuances are subtle, but the N is usually brighter-fruited, while the S tends towards a slightly savoury palate, especially over time. The Raisins Gaulois, a Vin de France, is a juicy, quaffable wine made from the fruit of the property’s young vines, while the Cuvée Marcel, only made in exceptional vintages, is a powerful, structured bottling derived from centenarian vines. The Camille, named after both the current Camille and her grandfather, is based on grapes grown on the slopes of Morgon’s iconic Côte du Py.