We are thrilled to finally welcome the sixth member of our Das Juice family and introduce you to Le Juice. This wine is a collaboration between Lo-Fi and winemaker Guillaume Chanudet. We got to know Guillaume through his time working with renowned Victorian winemaker William Downie and his work ethic and knowledge was second to none. The Chanudet name is a famous one throughout Beaujolais, with Guillaume’s cousins and father synonymous with the town of Fleurie. In 2017 Guillaume’s father retired and passed his almost 9ha of vines on to him, a daunting prospect at the age of 23. His holdings consist of 4ha of old vines on the hill of La Madonne, 3ha of new plantings focused around Prion and the rest scattered around the lower reached of the Fleurie village. Guillaume works all of his vines organically and employs the traditional method of hand tilling his soils to remove weeds and grasses.

After visiting Guillaume a number of times over the last few years we decided to send James over for part of the 2019 harvest to help with this project. Le Juice comes from a small single site called ‘La Cabane’ on the hill of the famed La Madonne in the high reaches of Fleurie. The old bush vines are planted on coarse sand with speckles of bright pink granite dotted throughout. The vines produce small tight bunches with amazing purity and intensity. The wine is carbonic macerated for 10 days as whole bunches in concrete and aged for 6 months in tank. We bottled it young with a small sulphur addition. It is juicy and bright with a fleshy mid palette and opens beautifully over the course of a few days.

It truly is an honour for us to get an opportunity to work with Guillaume and his magnificent cru Beaujolais vineyards.  We are so excited to share this wine with you and watch the project evolve over future vintages. –Das Juice