Zapoi Les En Hauts
⏳ Drinking Window
2022 - 2025
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Roasted duck, charcuterie board, grilled pork chops
✨ Technical Specifications
Hailing from the steep, high-altitude slopes of Chiroubles in Beaujolais, Zapoi Les En Hauts is a brilliant testament to Frédéric Cossard's natural winemaking genius. The name Zapoi is a whimsical, rebellious nod to the Russian term for a multi-day period of continuous drinking and revelry—a celebration of life and conviviality. Sourced from the Les En Hauts lieu-dit, where ancient Gamay vines dig deep into decomposed pink granite soils, this cuvée benefits from the cooler microclimate of Chiroubles' highest vineyards. Cossard applies his signature non-interventionist philosophy here: whole-cluster fermentation with indigenous yeasts and absolutely no added sulfur. The result is an incredibly pure, energetic expression of Gamay that leaps from the glass with vibrant red fruit, wild floral notes, and a distinct granitic minerality.
🍾 About the Producer
Established in 1996 by former dairy technician and wine broker Frédéric Cossard, Domaine de Chassorney emerged from the high-altitude, limestone-rich enclave of Saint-Romain in the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune. Expanding from his core estate vineyards into an adventurous micro-négoce under the Frédéric Cossard label, he works across Burgundy, the Jura, Beaujolais, and beyond. Cossard champions a holistic, self-devised 'homeopathic' viticultural method grounded in biodynamic preparations and rigorous soil health. In the cellar, his philosophy is strictly non-interventionist and uncompromisingly clean, relying on negative-ion oxygen sterilization instead of sulfur dioxide. White grapes undergo extended pressing and long spontaneous fermentations without temperature control, while red and macerated cuvées see gentle whole-cluster infusions in open wooden vats, concrete eggs, or qvevri. Known for benchmark skin-contact expressions like 'Feel Good' and 'Rafling' alongside pure expressions of Saint-Romain and Savagnin, Cossard's wines are renowned for their electrifying vitality, textural purity, and luminous clarity.
🍇 Grapes
Gamay