Beaujolais represents 18,000 hectares of vines, and the Raphaël Chopin estate, founded in 2009, occupies five particularly well-situated hectares: southern exposure in semi-hills on clay-limestone soils in Beaujolais-Villages La Savoye; very old schist and eruptive rocks in Morgon; and pink granite in Régnié.
The young vines (planted in March 1989) lie very close to the older ones, with their gnarled feet, which were planted in 1905. The yields are small—35 to 50 hectoliters per hectare, on average.
Raphaël respects the terroir and vines and practices “lutte raisonée,” or supervised control, and most of the treatments used in the vineyard are of natural origin. The new plantings on the estate are worked with biological control. Vinification is semi-carbonic at a low temperature.
