Tasting Notes & Ratings
French Wine of the Year – James Suckling’s Top 100 Wines of France 2025
Grape
100% Gamay.
Tasting notes
Wine to keep par excellence, Morgon Côte du Py owes its typicity to the composition of the soils rich in blue stones coming from the degradation of schists rich in iron oxide. Powerful wine with noble tannins, aromas of kirsch, produced in the heart of the place called Côte du Py, around the cross dominating the summit.
This astonishingly well-made and vibrant Beaujolais-Villages wine demonstrates the versatility of the Gamay grape though richly assertive with fabulously deep, dark cherry and plum flavours and a long, savoury finish, it remains freshly mineral on the palate. Exciting now, but will improve with age.
Expert Ratings
James Suckling’s Top 100 Wines of France 2025 shatters the myth that France’s greatest wines must be powerful, long-aged, and expensive.
Jean-Marc Burgaud’s Morgon Côte du Py 2023, crowned French Wine of the Year, embodies a new definition of excellence, combining great concentration, dazzling minerality, and remarkable finesse.
Sourced from six hectares atop the volcanic slopes of Côte du Py, this Gamay is fermented entirely in concrete tanks, offering purity of fruit and terroir expression: violet, forest floor, and wild herbs, with no oak influence.
James Suckling highlights it as a wine of both precision and emotion, proving that true greatness can be both accessible and authentic.
More About The Winery
Based in Morgon, Jean-Marc Burgaud is one of Beaujolais’ rising stars, known for crafting pure, structured Gamay from his 19 hectares of old vines. His vineyards, averaging 40+ years, lie on granite and schist soils, with the famed Côte du Py delivering wines of striking depth and minerality.
Using traditional Beaujolais methods with whole-cluster carbonic maceration and careful élevage in both tank and barrel, Burgaud produces wines that are bright, fruit-driven, and age-worthy. Expect vivid notes of mulberries, cherries, and spice wrapped in freshness and precision.