Jean Foillard
If one hill made the case that Beaujolais belongs in the same conversation as Burgundy, it's the Côte du Py — and Jean Foillard is the grower who made that case most convincingly. Old-vine Gamay, blue volcanic rock, next to nothing added. Here's the wine, the slope, and how to taste it at the source.
One hill settles the argument. For years people asked whether Beaujolais could ever be taken as seriously as Burgundy, and the honest answer was: taste Jean Foillard's Morgon Côte du Py and then ask again. It is Gamay with the depth, the perfume and the ageing curve of a fine Côte de Nuits — and it is, for a great many drinkers, the single best bottle of natural cru Beaujolais being made anywhere.
Foillard took over his family's vines around Villié-Morgon in the 1980s and, like his neighbours, turned away from the chemical farming and heavy-handed winemaking that had cheapened the region. He fell in with Marcel Lapierre, Guy Breton and Jean-Paul Thévenet — the four the importer Kermit Lynch dubbed the "Gang of Four" — and with them rebuilt a way of making wine that added almost nothing and revealed almost everything.
The Côte du Py
Everything here comes back to one slope. The Côte du Py is the great hill of Morgon: a rounded rise of decomposed blue volcanic rock, iron-rich and crumbling, that the locals call roches pourries — rotten stone. It is the reason Morgon is the burliest and most structured of the ten Beaujolais crus, and the reason Gamay grown on it can age for a decade and pass, in a blind glass, for grown-up Burgundy.
Foillard's genius is restraint. He farms one of France's great hills, and then has the discipline to let it speak without shouting over it.
Foillard's Morgon Côte du Py is the reference bottling from that hill. Old vines, whole-bunch carbonic fermentation with wild yeasts, ageing in seasoned oak, minimal sulphur — and the result is dense, mineral and long, with dark cherry, violet, iron and a savoury undertow that unfolds for years. In top vintages there's an old-vine selection of even greater concentration, released in tiny quantity; if you see it, it's worth the stretch.
The rest of the range
Below the Côte du Py, the straight Morgon is the gateway — the same hands, the same honesty, a touch more immediate and a lot easier to find. It's the bottle to open first to learn the house style: bright, silky, faintly wild, deeply drinkable poured a little cool. Foillard also makes small amounts from other Morgon sites and neighbouring cru fruit; all of it carries the same signature of purity and freshness. For the wider map of the crus and how Gamay behaves across them, see the Beaujolais wine guide.
The place
The domaine sits in the granite hills around Villié-Morgon, in the cluster of stone villages that make up the Beaujolais crus. This is quiet, folded farming country — steep vine rows, dry-stone walls, the Côte du Py rising over it all. Come for the wine, stay for the landscape; there is very little here that isn't beautiful.
Visiting
Be realistic: this is a small family estate, not a hospitality business. There's no tasting room with opening hours, and the Foillards spend their days making wine, not receiving visitors. Any visit is arranged well in advance and treated as the privilege it is.
The dependable way to taste Foillard is through the trade. His bottles are cult objects on natural-wine lists in Lyon, Paris and far beyond, and a good caviste in Beaujolais will pour him alongside the other Gang of Four growers. If you're touring the crus, that side-by-side — Foillard, Lapierre, Breton, Thévenet, all Morgon, all natural, all different — is the tasting to seek out. It's the whole story of modern Beaujolais in four glasses.
What to buy
The Morgon Côte du Py is the essential bottle: the wine that proves Gamay can be great, and the one to lay down for a few years if you have the patience. Buy it whenever you find it in a good vintage. Start, though, with the village Morgon — cheaper, easier to source, and the clearest introduction to why this grower matters. Drink that one young and cool; save the Côte du Py for the cellar.
Common questions
His Morgon Côte du Py — for many drinkers the single greatest expression of cru Beaujolais being made today. Foillard farms old Gamay vines on the Côte du Py's blue volcanic schist, ferments whole-bunch with native yeasts, adds little or no sulphur, and produces a wine of Burgundian depth and perfume that ages beautifully. He's one of the 'Gang of Four' who revived natural winemaking in Beaujolais.
It's the great hill of Morgon — a rounded rise of decomposed blue volcanic rock the locals call 'roches pourries', or rotten stone, rich in iron and manganese. That geology gives the wine a density, a mineral spine and an ageing potential most Beaujolais never reaches. Côte du Py Gamay can be mistaken for a fine Côte de Nuits after a decade in bottle. Foillard's is the reference bottling.
Yes, in the fullest sense — organic old vines, native-yeast fermentation, and minimal or no added sulphur. But it wears its purity lightly: this is precise, structured, seriously good wine first and a 'natural wine' second. That's exactly why it converted so many sceptics. Confirm the current sulphur regime with the estate, as it varies by cuvée and vintage.
The Côte du Py certainly does. In a strong vintage it can drink well for a decade or more, shedding its bright young fruit for something deeper and more savoury — dried cherry, forest floor, blood-orange acidity. The village Morgon is more for the near term. If you're cellaring, Côte du Py is the one to lay down.
Glossary
- Côte du Py
- The most famous lieu-dit of Morgon — a hill of decomposed blue volcanic schist ('roches pourries') above Villié-Morgon, prized for producing the deepest, most ageworthy and most Burgundian of all Beaujolais reds.
- Gang of Four
- Importer Kermit Lynch's nickname for four natural-minded Morgon growers — Foillard, Marcel Lapierre, Guy Breton and Jean-Paul Thévenet — who revived low-intervention winemaking in Beaujolais in the 1980s.
- Roches pourries
- Literally 'rotten rock' — the local name for the crumbly, iron-rich decomposed volcanic schist of the Côte du Py, which gives Morgon its density and structure.