Beaujolais

Beaujolais spent decades living off Nouveau and suffered for it. Its ten crus, Morgon, Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent among them, make serious reds from old Gamay bush vines on granite, and Burgundy domaines priced out of the Côte d’Or have bought land there. The official 2024 table puts a hectare in Moulin-à-Vent at about €100,000 and ordinary Beaujolais at €12,000, against €900,000 for a Côte d’Or village vineyard.

Economics in brief

SAFER’s 2024 table gives Moulin-à-Vent €100,000 a hectare (range €80,000–110,000), Fleurie €85,000 and Morgon €75,000, while plain Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages sit at €12,000 (€4,000–20,000), among the cheapest appellation vineyard in France. The gap between the crus and the rest is the story: cru prices have risen as the Côte d’Or’s have become unreachable, and the region’s vineyard area has shrunk by about a third since the 1990s as uneconomic plots were pulled up.