2020 Domaine Guy Breton P'tit Max

P'Tit Max is made from Max’s oldest (130 years old) Morgon vines, aged for 10 months in old Domaine de la Romanée-Conti barrels. This wine is the most serious of all. The palate is dense, concentrated and acute. The texture is velvety; the fruits are ripe, with notes of black cherry, cassis, liquorice, mint, clove, earthy. A wine with considerable concentration and density but that is simultaneously ethereal and drinkable.

From just over 3ha of old vines around the crus of Morgon, Chiroubles, Regnié and Cote de Brouilly, Breton’s Beaujolais are possessed of a fruity vibrancy, ethereality and minerality which makes the mind boggle, showing what can be done when low-intervention, low- or no-sulphur winemaking is allied to obsessively careful vineyard management and a deep understanding of Jules Chauvet's methods for working with gamay. In Beaujolais terms, Breton remains a bona fide don.