Domaine Jean-Claude Lapalu, Beaujolais-Villages Vieilles Vignes 2022

Jean-Claude Lapalu is a big deal in Beaujolais, and at the forefront of the natural wine movement in France. He works with the same vines that his father and grandfather farmed before him, though they sold their produce to cooperatives, whereas Lapalu makes his own. When he began making his own cuvées, he bade goodbye to the conventional techniques he had learned while studying oenology and carved his own path. Elegance is his ultimate goal, and his focus is on fruit rather than tannin. Grapes are picked by hand and chilled before going to fermentation, and sulfur doesn’t get within spitting distance of most of his wines. For Jean-Claude, his wines can be separated into two categories: wines for standing up, and wines for sitting down. Either way works for me.