Moron-Garcia began as a collaboration of two friends, Matthieu Moron & Pierre-Olivier Garcia, the first vintage of the label occurring in 2016. Starting with a tiny smattering of vineyards, the duo set out to farm and vinify each wine as though it were a Grand Cru, the results generating tremendous excitement. From 2016 through the 2019 vintage, Mathieu Moron and Pierre-Oliver Garcia developed the vision that today (2020-onward) Pierre-Olivier carries on solo. The program is painstaking: beyond the Jayer-popularized destemming of the Pinot Noir berries, Garcia uses the baie-par-baie, or berry-by-berry method of de-stemming; here, the berry is clipped at the base of its stem, but preserving the pedicel (as opposed to ripping the stem from the berry). For all of the red wines of the estate, the fermentation tanks are filled with at least 30% of grapes de-stemmed in this method - essentially, preserving some of the aromas and textures of whole cluster wines without a huge spike in the pH or any overtly green flavors. The approach mirrors the rest of the work, both in the vineyard and cellars. Vineyards are farmed organically, encouraging sustainability and biodiversity. In the cellar, every step is measured, with gentle pressings, gravity-flow movement of juice and no addition of sulfur during vinification. The winery is naturally cool, preserving freshness and encouraging a long, slow fermentation process which adds to the resulting finesse of the wines. As Pierre-Olivier's wines become more widely-known, they obviously become much harder to acquire as the methods used to craft such elegant, outgoing wines are extreme and time-consuming. One would be wise to hoard whatever possible! Text: Thatcher's wine