Gamay takes its name from a hamlet near Saint-Aubin, on the Côte d'Or, where this cross of Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc appeared in the fourteenth century. It yielded early and generously — too generously for Duke Philip the Bold, whose ordinance of 1395 banished the "très mauvais et très desloyaulx plant" from Burgundy's slopes to protect the reputation of Pinot Noir.
Exile made it. Across the Saône, on the granite of Beaujolais, Gamay became itself: bright cherry and peony, light tannin, wines carried by fruit. Carbonic and semi-carbonic maceration gave the region its style, from the banana-scented exuberance of Nouveau to the ten crus — Morgon, Fleurie, Moulin-à-Vent — where the once-despised grape proves it can age with grace.