Domaine Azzara

There are some domaines you discover… and then there are the ones you feel you’ve been waiting for.

Domaine Azzara is one of those for me.

Benjamin Azzara is building something unusually serious on a tiny scale — and it’s not just about “making great Beaujolais.” It’s about taking Gamay all the way: treating it like a truly expressive grape, capable of shape, tension, depth and real ageing potential, without losing the energy and drinkability that makes the variety so addictive in the first place.

The wines don’t chase a style. They don’t try to impress.
They simply feel precise, personal, and completely themselves.

Gamay — taken seriously
Most people meet Gamay as something easy: bright, charming, uncomplicated.
Benjamin is taking it somewhere else.

His wines show how far Gamay can go when it’s treated with the same respect and discipline usually reserved for the great “serious” varieties and regions. The best way I can describe it: these bottles don’t feel like “Beaujolais with ambition.” They feel like a domaine — a clear direction, a clear signature, and a standard that’s rare at this scale.

Training that matters
Benjamin didn’t appear out of nowhere.

Before starting Domaine Azzara, he trained at Château Latour, and later worked as Pierre Vincent’s right-hand man at Domaine de la Vougeraie in Burgundy. That background matters — not because the wines are trying to become Burgundy, but because you can feel the discipline behind them: timing, proportion, and restraint.

What I love is that the technique never becomes the point.
It’s simply there to support what the vineyard is saying.

One steep hillside, worked by hand
The domaine is tiny and very focused: 5 hectares, essentially one steep hillside high up in Chiroubles, with parcels classified across Chiroubles, Morgon and Beaujolais-Villages.

The slopes are steep enough that almost everything is done by hand. The soils are a beautiful mix of granite and quartz, and in parts even blue stone, with old gobelet-trained vines that naturally keep yields modest and concentration high.

It’s the kind of place that can give “pretty” wines easily — but in Benjamin’s hands, it becomes something far more serious: wines you can follow from cuvée to cuvée, because the hillside shows up so clearly.

How he works
Benjamin’s approach hits a sweet spot that’s rare: instinctive, but never careless — and precise, without feeling technical.
Across the range, a few pillars return again and again:

• Whole-cluster work with a gentle maceration
• Indigenous yeasts
• Barrel élevage tailored to each cuvée (never oak for oak’s sake)
• Bottled without fining or filtration — direct, honest, alive
• A north star that’s all about shape, tension and clarity, not just fruit

Even the names matter. His cuvées form a small poetic line —
Stellogonie / Le Rêve / Rencontre / La Constellation — like a sentence you understand more deeply the more time you spend with the wines.

The cuvées
The range is built around a few distinct wines — each from a specific part of the hillside and each with its own personality:

• Stellogonie (Beaujolais-Villages): lifted red fruit, granitic snap, and a saline drive.
• Le Rêve (Chiroubles): perfume, finesse, mineral tension and high-altitude freshness.
• La Constellation (Morgon): deeper, structured, cellar-worthy — but always precise and fresh.

Why it matters
Domaine Azzara is already in demand — and after spending time with Benjamin and tasting the wines, it’s easy to understand why.

These bottles carry something rare: real craft, real sensitivity, and a long-term seriousness — all from a tiny hillside and a winemaker who clearly knows exactly what he’s building.