A 10-year-long project to geographically map the region of Beaujolais has been completed, allowing industry figures to push for official recognition of its newly delimited climats ahead of the area’s first Premier Crus.
While climats in Beaujolais are already established, the project has allowed the region to delimit and determine the soils of its plots with additional precision. It’s the first time such extensive cartography has taken place in the area.
The work will help strengthen the region’s campaign for Premier Crus in Beaujolais, and could also help bring it under the wing of Grand Bourgogne, which could lead to a merger with the wine board of Burgundy.
Laurent Chevalier, winemaker and managing director of Beaujolais producer Henry Fessy, told Harpers that “The wine board of Beaujolais is financed partly according to the amount of hectolitres produced, so with the decline of production over the past 20 years, Beaujolais has lost power.
“Bringing Beaujolais under the wing of Grande Bourgogne would strengthen Beaujolais financially. It could work like Chablis which retains part of its own budget within the Burgundy wine board.”
He added that the French Ministry of Agriculture has made it clear it would prefer to communicate with “one single interlocutor” rather than multiple bodies.
