Julien Sunier ‘Wild Soul’ Beaujolais Lantignié 2018

Julien Sunier has gone from being rising star to firmly established as one of the best producers in Beaujolais. Following in the footsteps of pioneers like his friends Marcel Lapierre and Jean-Paul Thévenet he works organically and biodynamically in the vineyard and naturally in the winery. Julien now has 7.5 hectares of organically farmed vines in Regnié, Fleurie and Morgon. When I first visited him in 2016, he emphasised how hard it is to work organically in Beaujolais, and just how back breaking the work can be. ‘We have opportunities to rent because people are getting old,’ says Julien, who talks much more than his younger brother. ‘Young people are beginning to arrive in Beaujolais. It’s pretty trendy and we have a good group of natural winemakers, but when you see the size of the vineyard, we need the young generation to come here.’

He says that organics is rare in Beaujolais because the vineyards are difficult to manage. The issue is manual weed control with the densely planted bush vines. ‘We are very proud to farm organically,’ he says. ‘It is almost double the cost in the vineyard but our price isn’t twice as much. In his small winery he works semi-carbonically (starting off fermentation carbonically but later pumping over and plunging as you would do in Burgundy), believing that full carbonic can risk losing the terroir. He only adds sulfur dioxide at bottling. Julien’s wines are really elegant and expressive. They have purity and express their terroirs really well.

Due to large crop losses in 2016, Julien Sunier founded a small negociant project and went in search of fruit for Wild Soul. The third vintage of Wild Soul is the first to be made exclusively from grapes grown in Lantignié, a commune renowned for its concentrated, age-worthy Beaujolais-Villages. It’s marginally fuller-bodied than its predecessors, but with the same explosive aromatics, fresh acidity and sheer buvabilité. Conceived for early-drinking, Wild Soul has no S02 added, but is bottled with a higher level of CO2 than Julien’s cru wines – this protects the wine (in the absence of SO2) and contributes a very subtle, energising spritz to the attack.