Corail 2019

I am very excited to be able to offer the wines of Morgan Seuillot and Christian Knott. I've been a fan of Christian's winemaking since his days at Savigny-lès-Beaune’s Chandon des Briailles, but haven’t been able to get my hands on bottles from his newer project with his partner Morgan, Domaine Dandelion. Until now. The property, just a hair under 10 acres, is essentially biodynamic and organic +++. Rather than treating their vineyards with copper and sulfur to combat mildew, the couple uses milk from the local dairy. Morgan, her father, and their trusty draft horses manually plow the rows between the vines. All of this is to say, everything is done by hand with intentionality and respect. Even the label paper, from an old mill in the Auvergne, is layered with flowers in the fibers, hand cut and glued onto each bottle. A massive amount of labor for wines that are as beautiful as they are hard to find. But onto this wine! In the very difficult 2019 vintage, the yields were so low that Christian and Morgan decided to ferment their co-planted Aligoté, Pinot Noir, and Gamay grapes together for the Corail. Instead of bottling it immediately, as would often be the case with rosé, they left it to develop in barrel until the spring of 2021. —Billy Smith