For many of us, a bottle of Jean Foillard Morgon Côte du Py was one of the first “aha” wines: a wine so transportive and delicious that it stops you in your tracks and forces you to examine your life priorities. It’s the kind of wine that gets people into the wine business itself.

The story has been told in these pages before. Foillard is a member of the group of growers that Kermit Lynch dubbed the “gang of four”. Along with Marcel Lapierre, Jean Thevenet and Guy Breton, these students of natural wine pioneer Jules Chauvet went on to revolutionize the wine world and helped to spread the gospel of natural wine from vigneron, to restaurateur, to wine merchant, to wine lovers throughout the world.

Today, we are so excited to offer the 2021 Côte du Py. After a series of warmer vintages ('18, '19, and '20), we were beginning to wonder if the delicate, lifted, transparent style of Morgon that we fell in love with was going to be lost to the pre-global warming past. But the cool 2021 emerged as a welcome respite from the heat, revealing an electric, crystalline, outrageously delicious expression of Morgon that we just can’t get enough of. The granite-rich soils and 90+ year old vines (not to mention Foillard's meticulous organic farming) come through in spades.

The 2021 is absolutely singing today, but trust us, you should be buying a few bottles to forget about in your cellar. With time, they gain elegance and length that can rival much more expensive wines. Every time we open an older Foillard we kick ourselves for not cellaring more bottles — and we've been doing this for decades!

Jean Foillard, Morgon Côte du Py, 2021 $55.99