Background

Alain left his job in industry to take over his family’s tiny domaine in Morey in the late 1990s. He quickly made a name for himself, from 2000-2006 he looked after the viticulture for the Hospices de Beaune’s parcels of Mazi and Clos de la Roche. He built his domaine to 4 hectares, buying or renting parcels in Chambolle, Gevrey, Fixin and Pommard amongst others and now produces just short of 20,000 bottles a year. Alain thinks deeply about both viticulture and vinification. He experiments restlessly, he has no simple answers and is a joy to question over a glass of wine. Alain prunes his vines to the Cordon Royat rather than the traditional Guyot, he believes it gives low yields and ripe, thick skinned berries. He has been using whole bunch fermentation longer than many, but again, he has his own ideas. Foolish, he says, to try and get the stalks ripe. The wines don’t need the stalk tannin; his grapes have thick and ripe skins, plenty of structure, the stalks are there to keep the cap loose and do away with the need for violent punching down during fermentation, a gentle foot tread is all that is needed. In this way Alain extracts as gently as he can. He farms without herbicides, ferments with natural yeasts and filters his wines as little as possible.