An oenologist by training, Mee Godard was born in South Korea to farming parents and adopted as a baby by a French family. Raised in France, she studied in Lyon and Montpellier, as well as at Oregon State University, before apprenticing in Burgundy with Dominique Lafon and others.

After working in enology sales, she arrived in Beaujolais at the end of 2012, where she found and acquired a domaine the following year with support from her network. This was no small starting point: 5 hectares in Morgon, including old vines—some up to 70 years—across Corcelette, Grand Cras, and multiple parcels on Côte du Py, forming the foundation of her estate in 2013. She later expanded with a Moulin-à-Vent cuvée in 2016 and another in 2023.

Initially cautious about farming organically due to concerns around rot, Mee has since fully converted the vineyards and continues to move toward biodynamic practices, including the use of pied de cuve to encourage native yeast fermentations.

In the cellar, her approach favors restraint over extraction, with an emphasis on structure, tannin, and extended aging in wood. Mee describes her style as vin de garde—wines built to age—while her use of whole clusters and partial destemming brings both mineral precision and a rounded, modern expression of Morgon Gamay.

Mee Godard’s wines are defined first and foremost by terroir, with each cuvée reflecting a distinct soil type and exposition across her parcels.

A key component is saprolyte—a rare, friable gravel-like soil identified in a 2009 Beaujolais study and now under consideration for international classification. Her Corcelette parcel is rooted primarily in this material, contributing to wines of lift, finesse, and precision.

In Côte du Py, the vineyards sit on pierres bleues—a mix of schist and blue volcanic stone (andesitic granite)—which bring depth, structure, and mineral intensity. From these parcels, Passerelle 577 is a selection from south-east facing sites on these same blue stone soils, highlighting their concentration and complexity.

Grand Cras is planted on alluvial gravel soils, offering a different expression—more open aromatically, yet still grounded by structure.

In Moulin-à-Vent, terroir shifts again. Les Michelons comes from decomposed pink granite and sand on a south to southwest-facing hillside at 400 meters, combining structure with finesse. Just above, Deschanes—shares similarly sandy soils but with a south-east exposure, resulting in a distinctly different profile despite the proximity.

Across all sites, it is the interplay of soil composition, elevation, and exposure that defines Mee’s wines, with each parcel offering a precise and individual expression of place.

From the outset, Mee worked her vineyards under lutte raisonnée, transitioning to organic practices by 2016 with the elimination of herbicides and the introduction of mechanical tillage in 2017. Her long-term goal is to move toward biodynamic farming.
Vineyard work is meticulous and entirely hands-on, with careful attention to practices such as disbudding, pruning, and leaf thinning. This precision in both canopy and soil management is central to achieving balanced vines and high-quality fruit.

Mee prefers to use a fair amount of whole bunches. It depends on the vintage and the parcel but she usually de-stems only about half of the fruit. The length of her macerations vary but on average last 12 to 16 days in cement. She is aging her wines in a combination of vessels, always searching for the perfect balance of each for any given vineyard. She has mostly neutral barrels, foudre and demi-muids in her cellar.