2018 Charly Thevenet Regnie Grain & Granite

Cru Beaujolais – is there anything better?

This one – Charly Thevenet’s Regnie “Grain & Granit” comes from our Kermit Lynch file. Kermit discovered the “Gang of Four,” the four key producers who in the 1970s were reinventing Beaujolais along natural lines, so I will keep my commentary short and turn it over to him:

“Growing up the son of famous “Gang of Four” Morgon producer Jean-Paul Thévenet, Charly Thévenet was exposed quite early on to traditional, more natural viticulture—a philosophy that his father and friends helped to resurrect in Beaujolais in the early eighties. Though only in his twenties, Charly has already started a dynamic career. A few years ago, with extensive experience working for his father and in Marcel Lapierre’s winery already under his belt, he purchased a parcel of eighty-year-old vines in Régnié, west-southwest of his hometown of Villié-Morgon. Régnié is a terroir enjoying something of its own renaissance in the hands of talented growers like Charly and his dad’s pal, Guy Breton. In fact, Regnié has joined the short list of Grand Crus in the Beaujolais. Situated on a plateau of seabed stone in the foothills of the Côte du Py, it gives a fresh wine with solid acidity.

“As the next generation of the natural wine movement, Charly seems to have inherited his father’s savoir faire. He uses biodynamic farming techniques in the vineyard, never adding synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides to the vines. He harvests late, with an aggressive sorting of the grapes, adds minimal doses of sulfur dioxide, ages the wine in four-year-old Burgundian barriques, and bottles his wines unfiltered. Add a dose of that Thévenet talent, and you have a recipe for excellent wine! The 2007 vintage marked his first release and his first collaboration with KLWM.

“We are unanimously impressed with this rising star.”

Back to me: I started with Grain & Granit in the 2009 vintage. The wine was fresh, brilliant, crisp, and super delicious. Bright fruit with a mineral backbone, easy drinking but very complex. And it still is that way today – I have a few bare bottles of the ’09 remaining in my cellar.

Back then, it was allocated. Twelve bottles to the state of Wisconsin! But times change, and through hard work, I’ve gotten a larger share of the pie. We have a little deal on this stunner of a wine. Don’t miss it.