Thillardon's stylistic shift from the firm "Burgundian" style of winemaking to the lighter, silkier, semi-carbonic approach was instigated by his friendship with J.L. Dutraive and Yvon Metras, two of the greatest natural winemakers in Beaujolais... Read More
Thillardon's stylistic shift from the firm "Burgundian" style of winemaking to the lighter, silkier, semi-carbonic approach was instigated by his friendship with J.L. Dutraive and Yvon Metras, two of the greatest natural winemakers in Beaujolais today. This has made Thillardon a cult star of his own.
The special thing about Thillardon's wines is that the wines go far beyond the hallmarks of the semi-carbonic style. They are amiably fresh and silky, to be sure, but also unapologetically complex, mineral, and spacious. These are wines of place, precisely rendered down to micron – Burgundian in ideal, if not methodology.
It's this sober stoniness intertwined with a hedonistically silky, luminescent red-fruit character, that is becoming Thillardon's signature. It's a style that judiciously showcases the great potential of Chénas' granite soils, surely one of the more intriguing, if obscure, Beaujolais Crus.
