Who: Jean-Claude, Genevieve and Jeanne Chanudet
What: Morgon and Fleurie
Where: Villié-Morgon
When: Since nineteenth century
If you don’t feel emotion when you drink a wine, drink something else.
– J-C Chanudet
The estate has been in Genevieve Chamonard’s family for a couple of hundred years. Her father Joseph (1908-1989) had taken over the Domaine his father and made wine all his life from his vines in the cru of Morgon and a tiny parcel in La Madone of Fleurie. He also resisted totally the advance of chemical farming and only installed electricity in his cellar at the end of his life in the 1980s. Genevieve’s husband Jean-Claude Chanudet took over the estate in 1985 and their daughter Jeanne, a practising veterinarian, joined in 2018.
They have four hectares of very old vines across four parcels in Villié-Morgon with four different soil types and a parcel of half a hectare of very old vines on old pink granite in Fleurie.
Jean-Claude comes with a background in business as well as having an interest in Château Cambon with the Lapierre family which helps him take a relaxed view about ageing the Joseph Chamonard wines before sale. Known locally as Le Chat, he strikes a recognisable figure with his bushy beard, or whiskers, and fedora, slightly forbidding demeanour but in reality very warm soul.
Jean-Claude was an old friend of Marcel Lapierre and was among the early adopters of natural and traditional winemaking methods espoused by Lapierre in the 1980’s and 90’s.
The farming has always been organic, though certification is eschewed due to a dislike of bureaucracy and loss of freedom to do what’s best in the vineyard (organic products come and go, just like synthetic products). The winemaking is simple, carried out by classic carbonic maceration at relatively cool temperatures with the wines aged in bottle before release.
This is our go-to for the most classic of all Cru Beaujolais.
