70% Gamay/30% Poulsard. The Renardats are 7th-generation vignerons of mainly méthode ancestrale Cerdon du Bugey wines in the tiny village of Mérignat in northern Bugey. They farm 13 hectares of Gamay and Poulsard biodynamically (certified as of the 2022 vintage) in these high, rolling, wooded, steep hills of poor, rocky, clay-limestone soils. The fruit is harvested by hand, gently pressed and naturally fermented at very cold temperatures in steel tanks. At around 6% alcohol, the wine is bottled and slowly continues its fermentation in the cold cellar. Each bottle is then emptied by vacuum into a pressurized tank; the wine in tank is filtered to remove most of the remaining yeasts and rebottled with a touch of sulfur. The bottles continues to ferment to about 8% alcohol and are disgorged in December of the vintage. Final residual sugar is usually about 60 grams/liter of residual sugar. 

Note: after losing 70% of their 2024 vintage to terrible weather, Renardat opted to blend it with some 2023. The final wine is 60% 2023 and 40% 2024 with the same proportion of Gamay to Poulsard.

Another note: the careful and calibrated Renardat Cerdon vinification process sounds complex for a “simple” wine but is the only way to orevent refermentation and exploding bottles with méthode ancestrale wine with significant residual sugar. Back in the olden days, gargantuan quantities of sulfur were the only way to try to suppress further fermentation (often without success, even though the wine rarely traveled more than 20 km. from the village); the Renardats chose a non-sulfur-driven path, as the technology to do so developed over time.