Yvon Metras - Beaujolais Rouge 2024
Yvon Métras's estate has established itself for decades as one of the most sought-after names in Beaujolais, embodying a demanding natural style and an almost artisanal approach to Gamay. Based around Fleurie and Romanèche Thorins, the winemaker works his granite plots with rare precision, favoring plowing, very low yields, and absolute respect for living things. Heir to Jules Chauvet's philosophy, he advocates a winemaking process without artifice, where indigenous yeasts and the absence of additives guide the pure expressive quality of the fruit. This discreet rigor offers wines of troubling finesse, often allocated due to their rarity sparking enthusiasm. The 2024 vintage, bright and balanced, allows Métras to produce a Beaujolais Rouge with dazzling freshness, vibrant and intensely aromatic, true to its aesthetic of controlled lightness.
This 2024 Beaujolais Rouge comes from Gamay grapes grown using natural agriculture, hand-harvested at perfect maturity and carefully sorted to preserve the purity essential to the Métras style. The vinification relies on traditional semi-carbonic maceration, with a significant portion of whole clusters that give the wine its airy, floral, and juicy character. Fermentations occur without additives, guided solely by the grape's native yeasts, allowing the granite minerality inherited by the vines to express itself. The aging, exclusively in tanks, reflects the desire to preserve aromatic transparency without wood influence, resulting in a sincere, lively, and deeply readable wine. This 2024, already very approachable, reveals a remarkable coherence between material density, fruit brightness, and tangy tension, the signature of great natural wines from Beaujolais.
On tasting, Yvon Métras Beaujolais Rouge 2024 shows a light ruby color, delicate and luminous. The nose immediately charms with its burst of small red fruits—raspberry, redcurrant, and fresh cherry—lifted by notes of wild strawberry, peony, and violet. On the palate, the attack is straight, fluid, with disarming juiciness, carried by pure and crunchy fruit that unfolds with remarkable precision. The tannins are of crystalline finesse, almost imperceptible, while the natural freshness stretches the palate in a vibrant and digestible style. The finish, tangy and salivating, extends the floral and fruity aromas, with an irresistible joyful and energetic character. At the table, it ideally accompanies fine charcuterie, roast chicken, pâté en croûte, roasted vegetables, seasonal bistronomic cuisine, or a lightly aged soft cheese. Served slightly chilled, it reveals all its delicacy and slippery dimension.
Grape variety: 100% Gamay
