Paisan vigneron Michel Guignier has been working full-time on his family’s farm, which includes about 4 ha of vineyards, since he was 20 in 1981. His father almost immediately started sharing significant responsibilities with Michel, including the choice to stop selling to the local co-op and bottle their own wine. They proceeded to make fairly manipulated wines from conventional grapes for nearly two decades, with Michel slowly coming to the realization in the late 90s that he was killing the life in a vineyard in order to preserve a wine and that none of the chemicals he was using were things that he felt comfortable consuming or selling to people.

Michel’s farm has been certified organic since 2000 and Biodynamic shortly thereafter–he hasn’t even used copper since 2017. He’s in constant pursuit of “balancing the monoculture” of the vineyard by improving and encouraging biodiversity. The land is surrounded by forest (a rarity for the generally monocultural Beaujolais), much of the food he and his family eats comes from the farm/garden, he tends a handful of cows, chickens, and rabbits, and his large compost pile is apparently quite impressive.

Michel works the very tightly-planted vineyards, whose Gamay vines range in age from 30 to 75 years, with his long-time farmhand, Bistere, a horse. After farming conventionally for nearly 20 years, Michel has learned that intentionality and long-term thinking can go a long way for both the environment and his mental state, but also that the wines produced by vines tended so personally (and, in his eyes, with positive intentions) are more energetic and expressive than their less intimately-grown counterparts.

Michel extracts in a way that is reminiscent of alchemy–creating delicate and mineral iterations of Gamay that prove even hot vintages can produce refreshing wines. All his red wines are made using semi-carbonic fermentation in concrete, followed by aging in large oak foudre.