2019 Fleurie En Remont

Julie Balagny’s first vintage was 2009. Balagny makes her wines in a strictly minimalist fashion, much like those of her mentor, Yvon Métras. The property comprises of roughly four-and-a-half organically farmed hectares of vines. These can be wild wines, but they’re always intriguing, especially if one’s taste in Beaujolais leans toward the natural side. That means all whole clusters crushed in an ancient, manually turned basket press, fermentation occurs in concrete tanks and aging follows in concrete and neutral oak casks of varying sizes. Needless to say, no yeasts or enzymes are added, and only a tiny amount of sulfur (as in about one gram per hectoliter) is introduced at bottling, and in some vintages, Balagny has added none at all. That makes the wines fragile – there’s no way around it. But like the Métras wines, when they’re well cared for, they can be fabulous and loaded with personality. I was fortunate to receive these 2019s immediately after they arrived in the US after being shipped in a refrigerated container, so they were as fresh as could be considering their journey, and they showed extremely well. Balagny’s wines have a serious cult following in France, so they’re not exactly easy to find given the combination of small production and demand.