Thevenet 2021 Morgon 'Les Clos'

100% Gamay

Beaujolais, France

Red cherry and black pepper

Morgon is one of the most celebrated crus in Beaujolais and is situated in the heart of its ten cru communes. With a semi-continental climate of long, hot summers and cold winters, the region is perfect for Gamay, a grape with great versatility that has the potential to render wines as fine, elegant and complex as many Burgundies. The geological history of the Beaujolais Crus is largely associated with France’s ancient rock formation, the Massif Central, a more than 300-million-year-old heavily eroded mountain range in the lower half of France. The bedrock in northern Beaujolais is quite the opposite of their northerly Burgundy neighbors who grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on limestone bedrock and clay. Here it’s mostly composed of acidic rocks (limestone is alkaline) like granite and volcanic igneous rocks, and metamorphic schists and gneiss, and seemingly an endless supply of other rock formations, all with an acidic pH.

Sandy and rocky granite soils provide the Morgon wines of Thevenet a certain well-rounded structure and richness with lift and grace rarely matched by other crus—although each cru has their own personality and strength. By contrast to the rest of Morgon, its famous hill, the Côte du Py, has a unique soil type quite different from granite, mostly composed of metamorphic bedrock (granite is an igneous rock) and renders some of the most powerful examples of Beaujolais.