When Julien was 16 years old he did what seemed to be most natural to him: farming and wine. As he grew up in Auvergne, the southern part of Burgundy, he was drawn to do something with wine, as he was obviously exposed to it early on. In 2002 he was lucky to start working for Catherine and Dominique Derain, proponents of very early natural and bio-dynamic winemaking. As they were nudging him to start making his own wines he bought some Pinot Noir grapes and in 2010 he finally moved on and bought his first parcels. After some initial help from friends he moved into his own cellar in 2013 and started to make some of the most natural wines in all of Burgundy.
Originally this red wine was called Metisse because Julien mixed a little bit of Chardonnay into the Gamay juice, but for the last couple of years, he has stopped adding it. So now it's just pure Gamay. After a partial de-stemming and 10 days of maceration, two-third ferments in fiber tanks. The other third is directly pressed and after fermentation is put back into the mix. And it's nothing you would expect coming from your typical Beaujolais fare. It is more like a Jura red and can be easily chilled as a perfect summer red. With some of the raspberry and cherry aromas and the leftover fizz in the bottle make you want more with every glass. This bottle would be happy to join any balcony barbeque with grilled sardines or merguez.