Many decades before “Morgon,” “Fleurie,” and “Brouilly” became household names among young sommeliers at the best restaurants across the country, there was one undisputed champion of Cru Beaujolais: Moulin-à-Vent. Indeed, if you could time travel to Paris just before the onset of WWII, you would see that these wines used to command the same prices as top villages Burgundy like Volnay and Vosne-Romanée. Why? Because this Cru village has a little secret in its soil—which we’ll explain in detail below—which adds a richness and a structure that is singular among the region and lends extraordinarily long life to these wines. Small wonder that the French nicknamed Moulin-à-Vent “The Lord of Beaujolais Wines.” And when you farm old vines with purpose, and use old-school “Burgundian” winemaking techniques, like the talented team at “Les Gryphées,” you end up with a stunningly complex, built-for-the-cellar beauty that easily rivals much more expensive cousins to the north in the Côte d’Or. This is a seriously great bottle of red, for a remarkably unserious price. Stock up!

Beaujolais, by and large, is country wine, made for early consumption in bars and cafés in nearby Lyon or faraway Paris. As such, there are very few “proper” châteaux in the region, but tellingly, the few that do exist are located in and around the vines of Moulin-à-Vent. Named for the eponymous 15th century windmill that sits majestically atop the highest hill in the appellation, Moulin-à-Vent has actually only been called such since the AOC classification of 1936. For centuries prior, the wines were known by the name of the commune where they grew (much like