Ten Natural Wine Fascinations of 2024
Ten bottles that counted. Plus: a visit to Marne biodynamic natural Champagne maestro Sébastien Mouzon. And lunch at L'Eurasienne, the adorable and unlikely natural wine haven of Epernay.
Bonjour, folks! It’s 2025, a major city is burning in front of our eyes, and a grinning sex offender is about to be sworn in to the US presidency again. What the world needs now, I am almost certain, is a short rundown of my ten most memorable natural wines of 2024.
I offer it below, in the spirit of diversion.
I meant to get the list out sooner, but got overwhelmed with the holiday season at the cave-à-manger in Chagny.1 Ditto for these two bonus reports from Champagne, which it would certainly have made more sense to release before New Year’s Eve and before everyone began making dutiful remarks about Dry January to one another:
An INTERVIEW with SEBASTIEN MOUZON of CHAMPAGNE MOUZON-LEROUX, who is bringing PIERRE RABHI-inspired AGROFORESTRY to the vineyard monoculture of the MARNE - and producing magnificent UNSULFITED CHAMPAGNES to boot.
A visit to EPERNAY for lunch at JULIE GEZEGABELLE-PHAM’s adorable pizzeria-slash-Vietnamese restaurant and natural wine canteen L’EURASIENNE. (No paywall.)
Better late than never, anyway. Now salon season is already looming! If you’re making the rounds in the south of France, be sure to stop by the ZOOM2 salon on January 26th in Sète, where I’ll be showing my Languedoc abandoned-vineyard wines alongside a splendid cast of real vignerons. (If you happen to be passing through Burgundy afterwards, I’ll open La Cave du Centre in Chagny on the evening of January 29th, and all day on the 30th, before I close again for two days to visit some salons in the Loire.)
In the meantime, I’m off for a lightning-quick trip to Philadelphia to introduce my son to his grandparents. I used to board flights with the firm resolution to get some writing done, only to promptly fall asleep immediately after takeoff. In the company of a nonverbal sixteen-month-old, I suspect neither outcome is in the cards this time. Instead I anticipate an extended public lullaby performance by yours truly, as I lug him up and down the aisles trying to insist, against all evidence, that everything going on around him is totally normal and fine.
TEN NATURAL WINE FASCINATIONS OF 2024
In alphabetical order. As with previous lists, I removed from consideration any impossible-to-find micro-cuvées. I tried to limit the selection to wines I returned to several times throughout the year, seeking them out on wine lists, or opening them at home with friends.
1. Clos Fantine - Vin de France “Nuit d’Orage” 2021-2023
“It’s to have less stress,” says Clos Fantine’s Corine Andrieu about her “Nuit d’Orage” cuvée, habitually comprised of assemblages of Faugères wines that may have encountered difficulty in obtaining the Faugères appellation. In practice, this means “Nuit d’Orage” is a variation of the same resonant old-vine schiste-soil carignan, syrah, and grenache that contribute to the estate’s Faugères “Tradition,” only at an even lower price. In a resounding affirmation that worrisome enological analysis figures are no more than figures, the Andrieus’ 2021-2023 “Nuits d’Orage” is among the most harmonious and toothsome wines the siblings have produced in recent years, as warm and bracing as a campfire in winter.
Read more: Transhumance at Clos Fantine
2. Simon Busser - Vin de France “Printemps” 2023
I made the mistake of gifting a six-pack of Simon Busser’s 2023 “Printemps” côt-merlot blend to my mother-in-law. Not because she didn’t appreciate it, but because my own appreciation for this crunchy, vertical, licorice-toned marvel only increased throughout the year, to the point that I rather gauchely drank most of the six-pack myself over the course of successive visits. Each bottle evokes memories of the bounteous sunlit May market in Puy-L’Evêque: walnut-embedded sausages, tomme de brebis, overflowing bowls of apricots, and sundry other delights of Cahors.
Read more: Simon Busser Hangs Up the Plow
3. Les Demains Dans Le Terre - Brieg Clodore - Beaujolais “Nuit Blanche” 2020
Brieg Clodore is a Bretagne-born agronomist who’s been farming about 2ha of vines in the southern Beaujolais since 2018. Upon our first meeting at a Bojalien event several years ago, I recall reeling from “La Fleur au Canon,” an evanescent gamay of Max Breton-level finesse. I reencountered him this autumn at Biojoleynes, where he was presenting something that I’d long given up hope of ever finding: a genuinely lovely Beaujolais Blanc. Clodore’s 2020 “Nuit Blanche” saw no débourbage and a staggering two years’ aging in barrel. On paper this shouldn’t work: when you give a Rolls Royce aging regimen to a Beaujolais Blanc you usually get … a Beaujolais Blanc, limp, candied, propped up by wood. “Nuit Blanche” retains the faint marshmallow note common to Beaujolais chardonnay, but here it is pinned to a bristling CO2, a muscular build, a saline tension. A Beaujolais Blanc to rival anything from the Mâconnais and perhaps even further north.
4. Eloi Gros - Beaujolais-Villages Le Perréon “Au Laveur” 2023
It is a bittersweet fact that the very best Beaujolais wines often reward impatience. Eloi Gros’ 2023 “Au Laveur,” from a high-sited parcel in Le Perréon, was electric raspberry-toned perfection from barrel in November 2023, to the point where many of Gros’ friends suggested he bottle it as a primeur. When Gros delivered the finished wine to my shop in Chagny in December 2024, “Au Laveur” had gained a deeper, purple fruit and a captivating, non-oak-derived vanilla tone, but retained its kinetic side-palate acidity. A true Beaujolais home-run, it has provoked unanimous appreciation from Burgundy vignerons of all persuasions, natural and otherwise.
Read more: Eloi Gros: An Homage to Vanishing Beaujolais-Villages
5. Levente Major - Olaszrizling “Judas” 2021
When I first met Matra vigneron maestro Levente Major, in the half-light of a parking lot beside a grim wine tasting in Budapest, I asked him how many bottles he produced. About 5000-6000 bottles per year he said. Then I asked how many hectares he farmed. Major, who speaks little English, said, “One five.” “One-point-five hectares,” I repeated, nodding. “No,” he corrected, recalling the word he was after. “Fifteen.” I later learned that Major, who also works full time as a school headmaster, has immense problems with wildlife thinning the yields on his basaltic clay hillsides. But the inconceivably low yields and the rampant biodiversity are surely contributing something to the majesty of his wines, foremost among them, in my experience, his 2021 “Judas,” a long barrel-aged, unsulfited welschriesling of surpassing luminosity and grace. (More to come on this singular vigneron soon.)
6. Pierre Mang - Vin de France “Le Parc” 2021
An extraordinary, strawberry-toned, mostly young-vine pinot noir from the wunderkind of the Mâconnais, a former Parisian who wisely apprenticed himself to the Valettes and Alexandre Jouveaux. While many 2021 reds from highly respected vignerons have come apart in recent years, falling victim to maladie de la squelette (when a heretofore unseen lactobacillus attacks non-fermentable sugars in bottle, resulting in the wine becoming a skeleton of itself), Mang’s “Le Parc” remains as ethereal and fresh-fruited as ever.
7. Le Mazel - Vin de France “Paulou” 2023
Almost all of the Le Mazel wines have become notably more flattering in youth in recent years. (It might be something as simple as harvesting a touch earlier.) But the 2023 range is crowned by a new cuvée, “Paulou,” from cinsault on limestone, a wine that prompts the immediate reflection that more cinsault should be planted on limestone. It’s crackling with CO2, deep-colored for cinsault, with gooseberry and cassis fruit aligned to the zinging roof-of-palate linearity of perfectly transmitted calcaire. Delirious drinkability in youth is not a quality I have historically associated with the wines of this yeoman Ardèche estate, but there we are.
Read more: Gérald Oustric: The Most Important Thing Is To Be Honest
8. Axel Prüfer - Vin de France “La Capitulation Ne Paie Pas!” 2023
Mea culpa: I left Axel Prüfer’s estate’s 20th anniversary party this past June with the idea that I was marginally less enraptured by his cuvées that involve macerating direct-press juice on pressed marc. We tasted many older wines on that occasion, and a common thread among the back-vintage ripasso cuvées was a certain dusty, leesy quality that emerged when the youthful fruit faded. This may indeed be the case, but I still regret not ordering more of Prüfer’s 2023 “La Capitulation Ne Paie Pas!” Early harvest cinsault pressed almost-directly and passed over grenache marc, it is by far the most jolting and wild and beguiling vintage I have ever tasted of this wine, the sort of unprecedentedly thirst-quenching elixir that, to turn the tables for once, could probably make Brasserie Cantillon jealous.
Read more: 20 Years of Le Temps des Cérises
9. Natalia et Margot - Vin de France “Salve” 2022
Another year, another masterpiece from this dynamic duo of Anjou. Their 2022 “Salve” floored me when I first tasted it at the Ah! Ah! Ah! tasting way back in January. To my delight, they still had some available when I was placing orders for my cave-à-manger in Chagny in December. Sumptuous and ample, with a wisp of micro-lees lending soft-focus to the silhouette, like a stocking over a camera lens, it’s a chenin that emanates light.
10. Mythopia - AOC Valais “Blue Velvet” 2018
My dear friend Lucie Kohoutová kindly opened this staggering, six-month whole-cluster-macerated Alpine pinot noir for me during a brief stopover in Prague last January. It took a few minutes of concentrated swirling and sniffing around her living room table to draw a line between this wine and certain masterpieces from Bruno Schueller and certain, well, educational Sancerre pinots from Sébastien Riffault. It is the entrancing, blasphemous perfume of botrytis on dry pinot noir. At once regal and revolutionary, “Blue Velvet” is a wine that should tear up the rulebook of Burgundy.
FIN
FURTHER READING
Ten Natural Wine Fascinations of 2023
Ten Natural Wine Fascinations of 2022
Ten Natural Wine Fascinations of 2021
Everyhing is Electric: An Interview with Sébastien Mouzon of Champagne Mouzon-Leroux
Dining on the Wine Trail: L’Eurasienne, Epernay
I don’t really know how to refer to the place without the French phrase. If I say “the wine shop,” then people underestimate all the time I’m spending cooking for all-hours service. If I say “the restaurant,” then people forget it’s a wine shop.
Nothing to do with the videoconferencing app. It’s just an unfortunate coincidence that the gallery hosting the salon shares a name with it.
Recently I rediscovered Cinsault and it re-started with cuvée “Paulou” ‘22 from Gérald. I tasted and bought it from Jocélyne (salon in Clermont-Ferrand), where it was one of the highlights.
Afterwards then came “Brutal Rouge” ‘22 (La Sorga) and “Gourmandise” ‘23 (J Peyras); these are brilliant wines (and nice alcohol levels!) from a brilliant grape. I knew Julien (La Remise, long time ago), but forgot all about him; until very recently and, really, almost all of his wines are great.