Know-How
«A legacy and a continuous improvement»
THE ART OF MAKING WINE...
EACH VINTAGE, EACH CUVÉE IS A UNIQUE ARTWORK
THE VINEYARD
It's in the vineyard that everything begins and everything is played out. Although we remain subject to the vagaries of Mother Nature, we do everything in our power to produce the finest grapes, with the greatest respect for our terroirs thanks to sustainable viticulture, taking care of our young vines as well as our 80-year-old vines.
The estate is HVE certified
CARING FOR THE SOIL
Our Chassagne soils are rich and generous, with a high proportion of clay and deep limestone which gives the Chardonnay all its tension.
Our soils are grassed for much of the year and worked by tractor or horse the rest of the time. The soil is only worked on the surface to minimize disturbance to the roots and soil life.
HUMAN WORK
Pruning, disbudding and leaf removal…
Throughout the year, we pamper our vines with a wide range of manual tasks. Winter pruning first of all, a long pruning to protect against the risk of spring frosts.
Pruning, pulling, plucking, tying, disbudding, topping, leaf removal... So many manual operations.
THE HARVEST
A “haute couture” harvest
The harvest is the culmination of a year's work and generally takes place over a period of 8 to 10 days in September. The harvest is totally made by hand, enabling the best grapes to be selected. Thanks to the proximity of the plots, the freshly cut grapes are transported to the winery in 30 kg boxes to avoid damaging them, with extremely short transport time, which preserves all the quality and freshness of the juice.
THE WHITE GRAPES
The whole bunches of Chardonnay and Aligoté grapes are pressed directly in our pneumatic press. The juice we obtained spends one night only in vats to settle down (decantation) before going into oak barrels the following day to start its alcoholic fermentation.
THE RED GRAPES
The bunches of Pinot Noir grapes, harvested in 10 kg open-work boxes, are chilled overnight in a cold room, before destemming and vatting, to benefit from a cold pre-fermentation phase that encourages the expression of the fruit. Maceration then lasts around 2 weeks, with alternating punch downs and pump overs to extract as much as possible from the vintage and give the wine its structure.
THE CELLAR
Each cuvée has its own personality
It's in our large underground vaulted cellar that we mature our wines, or maybe we should say that we let them grow and express their own personality, they are a bit like our children. We consider that most of the work has been done in the vineyard, so all that remains is to humbly but conscientiously accompany the transformation of this grape juice into a Grand Vin de Bourgogne. Alcoholic fermentation takes place naturally, thanks to indigenous yeasts. The same goes for malolactic fermentation, which starts by itself thanks to lactic bacteria. Through regular and precise analytical monitoring, we aim to keep inputs to a minimum and allow each cuvée to express the character of its terroir.
TRADITIONAL WOOD AGEING, LONG LIFETIME WINES
All our wines, without exception, spend a minimum of 10 to 12 months in 228L French oak barrels, with a proportion of new barrels between 20% and 30% for the Villages and Premiers Crus and no new barrels for the regional Burgundy wines.
Thanks to our collaboration with several coopers, we are able to achieve a rich aromatic complexity, combining light and medium heat to underline the expression of the terroir.
The lees of white wines are stirred every three weeks. After racking, they spend 4 months stabilizing and preparing for bottling.
The red wines spend around 12 months in barrel, are racked and then spend a further 6 months in vat before bottling.
Thanks to barrel ageing, we are able to produce Village and Premiers Crus wines that can be kept up to 10 years for the whites and 15 years or more for the reds.