One of the famed ‘Gang of Four’ (Breton, Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thevenet and Marcel Lapierre) credited with starting the natural wine movement around the village of Villié-Morgon in the 1980s, Guy Breton is rightly considered one of the most important Beaujolais producers in recent history. Sure, natural wine has become trendy McTrendy, but we prefer to concentrate on the intrinsic quality of the wines. From just 3ha around the cru of Morgon, Breton’s Beaujolais are possessed of a fruity vibrancy, ethereality and tension that are a marvel to behold, and show what can be done when natural winemaking is allied to obsessively careful vineyard management and a deep understanding of the entire winemaking process. It’s the combination of old vines, rigorous sorting of the grapes, low (or no) sulphur additions and a refusal to chaptalise or filter which gives these wines their arresting character. In Beaujolais terms, Breton remains a bona fide don.
