Charly Thevenet Regnie Grain and Granit 2016
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Wine &
Spirits -
James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker - Decanter
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Wine & Spirits
Still in his twenties, Charly Thevenet worked with his father, Jean-Paul, as well as with Marcel Lapierre, before purchasing his own 7.5-acre parcel in Regnie. The vines, planted in 1932 and 1946, grow in the foothills of the Cote du Py; he farms them with strategies adopted from biodynamics, sustaining the health of the vines and the microbiology of the vineyard, including yeasts that he then allows to spontaneously ferment the grapes as whole clusters. Aged in old Burgundy barrels and bottled without fining or filtering, his 2016 is immediately welcoming. It’s a delicate, ethereal beauty that may give you the kind of silky satisfaction that’s rare outside of Chambolle, here delivered as the essence of Regnie, as in gamay, granite and some talented microbes doing remarkably precise work. You might find green-peppercorn spice, rose-petal perfume and elegant red fruit, or you may just find a glorious wine that will have you rethinking Beaujolais.
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James Suckling
Extremely perfumed and bright with aromas and flavors of orange peel, lemongrass, dark berries and bark. Medium body, fine tannins and a flavorful finish. Solid and focused. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Charly Thévenet's 2016 Régnié is lovely, wafting from the glass with a decadent bouquet of sweet red and black plums, cherries and dried flowers, mingling with incipient notes of sweet soil. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, lavishly textural and velvety, with an ample core of succulent fruit and a richly savory finish. This is a deliciously gourmand Régnié that I'd be inclined to attack in its comparative youth.
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Decanter
An old-vine wine, made from a vineyard with an average of 70 years, that is planted on pink granite soils. Pure and lifted with Pinot-like notes; the palate is delicate and refined but packed with inviting fruit. Well balanced and digestible.
Other Vintages
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James
Suckling
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James
Suckling - Vinous
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James
Suckling
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Robert
Parker
Growing up the son of famous “Gang of Four” Morgon producer Jean-Paul Thévenet, Charly Thévenet was exposed quite early on to traditional, more natural viticulture—a philosophy that his father and friends helped to resurrect in Beaujolais in the early eighties. Though only in his twenties, Charly has already started a dynamic career. A few years ago, with extensive experience working for his father and in Marcel Lapierre’s winery already under his belt, he purchased a parcel of eighty-year-old vines in Régnié, west-southwest of his hometown of Villié-Morgon. Régnié is a terroir enjoying something of its own renaissance in the hands of talented growers like Charly and his dad’s pal, Guy Breton. In fact, Regnié has joined the short list of Grand Crus in the Beaujolais. Situated on a plateau of seabed stone in the foothills of the Côte du Py, it gives a fresh wine with solid acidity.
As the next generation of the natural wine movement, Charly seems to have inherited his father’s savoir faire. He uses biodynamic farming techniques in the vineyard, never adding synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides to the vines. He harvests late, with an aggressive sorting of the grapes, adds minimal doses of sulfur dioxide, ages the wine in four-year-old Burgundian barriques, and bottles his wines unfiltered. Add a dose of that Thévenet talent, and you have a recipe for excellent wine!
Delightfully playful, but also capable of impressive gravitas, Gamay is responsible for juicy, berry-packed wines. From Beaujolais, Gamay generally has three classes: Beaujolais Nouveau, a decidedly young, fruit-driven wine, Beaujolais Villages and Cru Beaujolais. The Villages and Crus are highly ranked grape growing communes whose wines are capable of improving with age whereas Nouveau, released two months after harvest, is intended for immediate consumption. Somm Secret—The ten different Crus have their own distinct personalities—Fleurie is delicate and floral, Côte de Brouilly is concentrated and elegant and Morgon is structured and age-worthy.
The bucolic region often identified as the southern part of Burgundy, Beaujolais actually doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the rest of the region in terms of climate, soil types and grape varieties. Beaujolais achieves its own identity with variations on style of one grape, Gamay.
Gamay was actually grown throughout all of Burgundy until 1395 when the Duke of Burgundy banished it south, making room for Pinot Noir to inhabit all of the “superior” hillsides of Burgundy proper. This was good news for Gamay as it produces a much better wine in the granitic soils of Beaujolais, compared with the limestone escarpments of the Côte d’Or.
Four styles of Beaujolais wines exist. The simplest, and one that has regrettably given the region a subpar reputation, is Beaujolais Nouveau. This is the Beaujolais wine that is made using carbonic maceration (a quick fermentation that results in sweet aromas) and is released on the third Thursday of November in the same year as harvest. It's meant to drink young and is flirty, fruity and fun. The rest of Beaujolais is where the serious wines are found. Aside from the wines simply labelled, Beaujolais, there are the Beaujolais-Villages wines, which must come from the hilly northern part of the region, and offer reasonable values with some gems among them. The superior sections are the cru vineyards coming from ten distinct communes: St-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Regnié, Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly. Any cru Beajolais will have its commune name prominent on the label.