Beaujolais Blanc, Famille Hoppenot 2024

Having spent some time on the senior team at renowned Beaujolais négociants Trenel, Grégoire Hoppenot has now stepped into the spotlight with his own excellent domaine at Les Roches in Fleurie, with his debut vintage coming in 2018. After years traversing the Beaujolais region in his previous role it was time to find his feet in his own vineyards, getting a real sense of place and expressing it in the wines that he makes. He says that his job is to convey the purest expression of a wine’s origin, its terroir, and the vintage and he works hard among the vines to achieve that.

His domaine embraces two slopes with very different characteristics, and between those slopes there is much diversity too, variations in geology, aspects and exposures, and altitudes. He has five distinct ‘climats’ across the two slopes, where he farms on organic lines (he is converting but has yet to be certified). Les Garants is truly typical of Fleurie, poor granite soils with quartz quite visible, overlooking the village itself with a south-south-west aspect and densely planted vines that can be up to 60 years old. At Les Moriers, just under a kilometre shy of Moulin-à-Vent, just under three hectares are granite too, but with a sandy element that deepens as the slope descends from 340 metres, and the vines look north-east. Here the vines can be up to 90 years old. Clos de l'Amandier is a monopole of the estate, in the south-eastern part of Poncié, one of the finest of Fleurie climats. Its steep slopes face south to south-west, soaking up the sun all day. Corcelette is a virtual wall of stony soil, its granite soils very shallow to the point that the bedrock breaks through in places, as if it weren’t hard enough to farm. And, last but not least, his vines at Les Roches itself are up to 50 years old, planted in nutrient poor, shallow granite and sand dominated soils spread over a plateau between 260 and 330 metres above sea level.

Harvesting at all the sites is manual, for very practical reasons as well as for reasons of quality. Yields are, as one might expect for such an assiduous vigneron, low for the region. Grapes are fermented in whole clusters employing only indigenous yeasts, with maceration times varying with each site and in each vintage, depending on the conditions. Extractions are gentle with the cap of skins kept submerged during fermentation, and temperatures kept below 30°C. Once the fermentation is complete, the wines are matured in a variety of casks and barrels plus some concrete vats, with times varying depending on the site and vintage. Clos de l’Amandier, Les Moriers and Corcelette are bottled under their own name, with two blends, Indigène and Origines pulling together the fruit from Les Roches and Les Garants.