2016 Régnié

This small, relatively new estate (4.5 hectares, of which 0.8 owned) was established by young Antoine Sunier, a Dijon native and graduate of Beaune’s Lycée Viticole, in 2014. Based on all the releases that I’ve tried so far (which is, well, all of them) it’s already a name to be reckoned with for high-quality, elegant and expressive Beaujolais. Sunier’s older brother, Julien, set up his own domain in 2008 and has already established himself as one of the region’s most respected addresses. The wines here (a single Morgon and a single Régnié) bear plenty of resemblance to their cousins’, stylistically. The fruit is grown organically, the wines are made by carbonic maceration and native yeasts, with no enzymes added. They are then aged in concrete tanks and small, neutral oak barrels before being bottled, with only a small hit of sulfur, without fining and filtration. This methodology puts Sunier’s wines comfortably into the “natural” category but, in my experience at least, they don’t head off into la Ville de Funk, like so many other examples made with such a hands-off approach.