Jean Foillard and the Gang of Four — how Beaujolais found its soul

In the 1970s and early 1980s Beaujolais was defined by the nouveau machine. Carbonic maceration was used to make wines fast; the Beaujolais Nouveau race pushed bottles to market in November; volume mattered more than place. The region became synonymous with a seasonal party wine rather than with serious Gamay.

The reputation cost was steep. Enormous quantities of forgettable wine trained drinkers — and critics — to look elsewhere. Beaujolais was easy to dismiss as industrial, soft and short-lived. For many serious wine lovers the crus might as well not have existed; Morgon and Côte du Py were local names, not international ones.

That was the landscape Jean Foillard and three peers walked into. Changing it would mean farming and fermenting against the grain of an entire commercial system — and proving that Morgon and its blue granite could make Gamay worth ageing.

Jules Chauvet was a chemist and négociant — a serious thinker about fermentation, not a slogan writer. His research into working without additives, without added sulphur, and with indigenous yeasts gave a scientific language to what careful growers were beginning to feel.

Those ideas were radical when Beaujolais was built on speed and intervention. Chauvet suggested that clean fruit and a calm cellar could produce wines that did not need the usual protective shortcuts. He became the intellectual godfather of the four producers who would turn the region around.

Foillard, Lapierre, Thévenet and Breton did not invent Chauvet's science. They applied it in the vines and the cellar when most of Beaujolais was still racing to November.

The four were Jean Foillard, Marcel Lapierre, Jean-Paul Thévenet and Guy Breton. Together they decided to farm organically, harvest late, and ferment without added yeast or sulphur — a collective break with industrial nouveau production.

The project was social as well as technical. They worked in parallel, shared ideas and reinforced one another at a time when going without sulphur in Beaujolais looked eccentric. The nickname "Gang of Four" stuck because it captured both the solidarity and the defiance.

While the rest of the region chased volume and calendar dates, they chased ripeness, site and clarity. The contrast could not have been sharper: one Beaujolais for the supermarket clock, another for the bottle that might still speak years later.

Morgon is one of Beaujolais's ten crus — the one most associated with structure and ageing potential. Within Morgon, Côte du Py is the blue granite volcanic hill at the heart of the appellation, and its most prized terroir.

Granite gives Gamay a depth and earthiness that softer sites rarely match, and a frame that can hold for years rather than months. Foillard's Morgon Côte du Py became the reference expression of what Morgon could be when the hill was farmed and vinified without the nouveau shortcuts.

That bottle did more than polish a local reputation. It gave drinkers a concrete answer to the question the Gang of Four had been asking: can Beaujolais Gamay be serious, age-worthy and terroir-driven?

Morgon Côte du Py is deep, earthy and structured — the wine that made people take Gamay seriously. Built on blue granite, it has a density and mineral quality that ages for years. It is Foillard's clearest statement of Morgon as a cru with weight and patience, and the reference bottle for what the hill can do.

Morgon 3.14 is the lighter, more immediately approachable expression — what Foillard does when he wants to show Gamay's joyful, immediate side without abandoning the same organic, low-intervention logic that defines the domaine.

Together the two cuvées tell the full story of what Morgon can be: one bottle for the cellar and the granite hill, one for the pleasure of Gamay drunk sooner. Same grape, same village, two tempos — and a quiet rebuke to the idea that Beaujolais has only one gear.

Beaujolais as a serious wine region is largely the Gang of Four's creation. Before them, the story was nouveau. After them, crus like Morgon could be discussed in the same breath as other French regions people collect and age.

The natural wine movement found in Beaujolais one of its earliest and most convincing demonstrations: humble Gamay, farmed cleanly and fermented without additives, could become wine that people seek out at tastings and keep in the cellar. Other producers followed the path the four had opened — first nearby, then across a generation.

The legacy is visible now. Beaujolais has some of the most exciting young growers in France, building on what Foillard, Lapierre, Thévenet and Breton established. On PACT's list of the world's 100 best natural wine producers, Jean Foillard stands at number ten — a ranking that reflects a whole region's second chance as much as one domaine's bottles.