Winemaker Notes
The Morgon Côte du Py is Stéphane Aviron’s most structured, earthy wine, and can age wonderfully for as much as ten years. The grapes are sourced from the slopes of an 1150-foot inactive volcano that is regarded as one of the top terroirs in all of Beaujolais. Vines face due south on a well pitched hillside of pour sandy soil.
Grapes are vinified separately until time for the final blending and bottling. The must is macerated in temperature controlled stainless steel vats for 12-15 days and then aged for 12 months in a combination of new and used oak casks.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Offering up aromas of cassis, dark cherries, pencil lead and baking chocolate, the 2016 Morgon Côte du Py Vieilles Vignes is medium to full-bodied, concentrated and firm, with a chewy finish that will demand some patience. It's a sterner, more structural wine than the version from Jean-Marc Burgaud, who is Aviron's source for this bottling.
Rating: 91+
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.