Domaine Jean-Claude Lapalu

Jean-Claude Lapalu is widely acknowledged as one of the icons of Beaujolais’s natural wine movement. When he took over his family vineyards in the 1990s, he was farming conventionally with the aim of sending his grapes to the local cooperative. He soon began questioning both the values of this style of viticulture, and also the kinds of wines being made with his grapes, so trained himself on a different approach, converting his vineyards to organic viticulture and making his own wines.
His minimalist approach to vinification results in the creation of wines notable for the purity of their fruit, and the precision of their balance. Even though many of his vineyards lie within the boundaries of the Brouilly appellation, the wine he’s best known for may well be his Beaujolais Villages Vieilles Vignes, a tangy, perfumed wine with gently raspy tannins. The corresponding Vieilles Vignes cuvée from Brouilly is denser and richer, with a stony minerality. La Croix des Rameaux, another Brouilly, comes from a warmer parcel and shows riper, darker fruit, while the concentrated, layered Cuvée des Fous is the product of a 120-year-old parcel of vines.