100% Gamay

Food pairings: White meats, fish and cheeses.

Winemaking: This is the domaine's method for its Fleurie Les Marrans: the grapes are picked by hand and sorted twice, in the vineyard and again on a vibrating table in the cellar. The whole clusters then go into vat for a traditional semi-carbonic maceration of 11 to 13 days with only native yeasts, temperatures kept below 28°C and a single, very light pump-over a day for a gentle extraction. After a slow, low-pressure pressing and a full malolactic fermentation with native bacteria, the wine ages for 12 months in large oak foudres and is bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Vineyards and terroir: The wine comes from the lieu-dit Les Marrans in the Fleurie cru, the plateau where the domaine built its winery in 1989. The 45-year-old Gamay vines grow at around 300 meters on crumbly pink-granite sand, facing south and east. The vines are goblet-trained and densely planted, so that each vine competes with its neighbors, and are farmed without chemical fertilizers, with light tilling, copper and sulfur treatments and most of the work done by hand. The domaine was in conversion to organic farming for this 2023 vintage, with certification from the 2024 vintage.

Family and history: Jean-Jacques Mélinand founded the Domaine des Marrans in 1970 when he acquired the vines of the Clos du Pavillon in Fleurie, and went on to farm more parcels in the cru. When the old vat house could hold no more, he built a new winery in 1989 on the plateau 500 meters from the clos, at the lieu-dit Les Marrans. His wife Liliane joined in 1994 to run sales and opened guest rooms at the estate, and vines on the slopes of Chiroubles followed in 2004. Their son Mathieu took over in 2009 after studying viticulture and enology and working in Australia and New Zealand, bringing with him vines in Morgon Corcelette, and his brother Camille joined him in 2019; together they are the domaine's second generation.

In the pictures: The vat room of the Domaine des Marrans in Fleurie (photo: Matpib, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).