Since there isn’t a huge amount of wine, we aren’t going to get to far into excruciating detail. But the story of Mee Godard is one worth touching on because she has already proven to be one of the most inspiring new faces in Beaujolais and the juice in the bottle harkens memories of something from the ‘Gang of Four’s’ greatest hits.
The tale is unique for the world of wine. Mee Godard was born in Asia and adopted, growing up near Lyon in France where she studied biology and biochemistry. Somewhere during her formative years she had the opportunity and interest in tasting wines, the complexity and variation of which captured her interest.
She decided to make wine a career and studied in both Oregon and Montpellier before taking a job as a Burgundy sales rep. She knew early on that that was not her calling and her end goal was to reach as high a level of achievement in wine as possible. She felt to do that she needed to create wine from the ground up and scraped together enough to purchase some old-vine plots from a vigneron that had no heirs and was about to retire.
She has dived heart and soul into the project, with an eye to natural winemaking but the skills and the sense to keep things clean. With little more than 6 hectares in Morgon and Moulin-A-Vent her domain is fairly samll. She is meticulous in the winery. There are very few sulphites added, and her red wines are made using traditional Burgundian methods. The vinification process begins with harvesting by hand in little cases that prevent the grapes from being crushed and goes from there.
The resulting wines have depth, density, and remarkable intensity of fruit. We have had a few different selections of her wines but hadn’t pulled the trigger because her pricing was among the elite of the region. In fact, the wines deserve to be there from a price perspective and the Mee Godard Morgon Corcelette 2020 (from her original vineyard acquisition) was simply too good to pass on.
Deep, saturated color, nose showing a depth of ripe extracted fruit, and plenty of power and substance, this wine can stand with any on Beaujolais. Very impressive and, based on what we have tasted thus far, exactly what she does on a regular basis.
She got a rather lengthy note (for him) from James Suckling who wrote, “What a strikingly original wine for this region! The smoked-bacon note in the nose would have made me think of the Northern Rhone in a totally blind tasting. On the palate there’s impressive creamy richness that makes me think of bacon fat sinking into good white bread. So much drive and energy at the finish, thanks to the very healthy, dry tannins. Drink or hold…94 points.”
Mee has come a long way since her start in 2013 and we expect she is only going to gain stature as time passes. Brilliant Beaujolais in the classic old school style but without any of the funk, this is a impressive effort and a estate to watch.