Winemaker Notes
Morgon's Côte du Py is already considered one of the finest terroirs of Beaujolais, and the Javernières vineyard one of its finest plots. Decomposed schist and granite, as well as manganese and iron oxides, give the wines here a particularly mineral elegance. Jean-Paul Brun is a classic producer working in a very Burgundian style, and brings forth wines that respect their sense of place. These wines are excellent drinking now, but have the power to age gracefully.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Fragrant for this appellation, but the wine has terrific ripeness and depth, which you feel already in the nose. Confirmation comes with the very concentrated but tightly focused palate and the tremendous lift from the vibrant acidity at the stony finish. Drink or hold. Plastic cork.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Morgon Côte du Py Javernières is showing very well with another year in bottle, revealing a youthful but expressive bouquet of ripe cherries, plums, warm spices, licorice and dark chocolate. On the palate, it's full-bodied, rich and layered, with ripe acids, an ample chassis of fine but firm tannins, and a long finish.
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.