Chardonnay, Beaujolais, France

Beaujolais blanc is a rarity, and even rarer for natural gamay king Jean Foillard, who makes only one white per year – but here it is in all its luminous and discreetly flinty glory! Jean Foillard – along with like-minded winemakers Guy Breton, Jean-Paul Thévenet and Marcel Lapierre, dubbed the Gang of Four – popularized many of the natural wine practices seen around the world today and he’s stuck by his pledge to make organic and minimal intervention wines that get us SINGING. This year’s mineral-driven & sophisticated chardonnay grape come from a mix of granitic and limestone soils in Pizay near Morgon, an area that more commonly produces handsome and muscular reds. Not quite as steely as Chablis can be, yet not quite as opulent as Burgundy, it’s somewhat of a Goldilocks chardo: tense as a tightrope and the tightrope walker’s mother, yet wearing a soft shoe and catching a bouquet in the final step. On the nose it’s a mask of daisies, orchard apples, the French Laundry’s famous Meyer lemon tart but on the palate it’s a surprising turn of events with chalk-drawn hop scotch & a bag of green almonds from the Middle Eastern grocer. Have it with a big triangle of hot, gooey brie.