Marcel Lapierre

Villié-Morgon, cru Morgon. The Lapierres arrived at Domaine des Chênes in 1909 - Michel came on as maître de chai - and took full ownership with Camille in 1930. Marcel Lapierre (1950-2010) took over from his father in 1973 and in 1981 met Jules Chauvet - the Beaujolais négociant-chemist whose ideas became the theoretical spine of the natural wine movement. From that point Lapierre stopped chaptalising, stopped using selected yeasts, stopped spraying synthetic chemicals, and progressively dropped or eliminated sulphur.

Kermit Lynch coined "the Gang of Four" to market Lapierre together with Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Guy Breton - four Morgon growers applying the Chauvet method at a time when the appellation was mostly in thrall to sugar and reduction. A fifth name is often added, usually Yvon Métras, sometimes Chamonard or Descombes; there is no official list.

The influence ran well past Morgon. Jean-Pierre Robinot, the Paris sommelier whose wine bar L'Ange Vin was a rallying point for the early natural-wine scene in the 1980s and 90s, cites Chauvet and Lapierre together as the twin revelation that sent him back to vines in Jasnières. Most of the people who now carry the Chauvet thread in one form or another - in the Loire, in Alsace, on the Etna - pass through Lapierre on the way there.

Today the domaine runs to roughly 16 to 18 hectares of Gamay, run by Marcel's widow Marie and their children Mathieu (joined in 2004, now winemaker) and Camille (joined in 2013). The work is the same: late harvest, whole-cluster, semi-carbonic, native yeasts, used oak. The flagship Morgon is bottled in two versions - "N" (sans soufre, no added SO2) and "S" (a small addition at bottling). Around them sit Raisins Gaulois (declassified young-vine Vin de France), a village Beaujolais, the old-vine Cuvée Camille from Côte du Py, and, from time to time, a roman-numeral vintage cuvée. Kermit Lynch has imported the estate for decades.