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) in these high, rolling, wooded, steep hills of poor, rocky, clay-limestone soils.

The bunches are harvested by hand, gently pressed and naturally fermented at very cold temperatures in steel tanks. At a few degrees of alcohol-when it's very cold outside and in the cellar--the wine is bottled and slowly continues its fermentation; putting the yeasts under the stress of extreme cold causes them to produce more sulfites, reducing the need to add sulfur to the wines ultimately. At around 6% alcohol, 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 (AOC requires 22-80 grams). Starting in 2024, the wine is vintage blend. 

The vinification process sounds complex and technical for a “simple” wine. And it is but is also the only way to prevent refermenting, exploding bottles with so much RS in the wine. Back in the olden days, gargantuan quantities of sulfur were the only way to manage that problem, though even that often didn't work and many bottles popped open and were lost within 20 km. of the cellar. The Renardat family pioneered this modern method.