476: Christophe Roumier Has A Family History Written In Wine

[00:00:01] Christophe Rumié began working at the Rumié family domain in Chambault-Moussigny in the early 1980s, after going to school for analogy. And the 1980s were a real key period of transition for Burgundy. Dominique Lafon of Comte Lafon was part of that same generation as Christophe,

[00:00:34] and Dominique recalled that 1980s period in Ill Drink to That episode 438. What he described was a generation of young people who really might have been expected to pursue another profession with the means they had available to them, but who decided instead to stay in

[00:00:50] Burgundy and vinify wine as the market for those wines also began to improve. These young people took up work at their family domains after studying analogy in school, while also being in regular contact with the older generations of vintners who had never been to school for

[00:01:06] wine. Here is how Dominique explained the mix of generations and approaches at that time in the 1980s in Burgundy. It's interesting that you had so much exposure with that older generation because you're sort of associated with the next generation of like Griveau, Rumié, yourself, and then

[00:01:24] you used to taste with Patrick Biesel a lot, right? Yeah. And Jacques Sais and all this group. I think it's interesting because my generation has one foot in the old time and one foot in the new generation. When I was young, I've

[00:01:39] known Pierre Ramonet, for example. I've known Mr. Renaud from Rayas, Jacques Dangerville and other people, and those was like old-time people, real old-time people. And I was a kid when Pierre Ramonet was talking to me. We are the generation that switched things

[00:01:59] in Burgundy, but we've known those old people. We've known or they talked to us about how hard it was in the past to work, to sell the wine, to make a living out of it. We had a

[00:02:14] once a year meeting at the restaurant à la Chapelle with all those producers. And I was very young. Henri Jallier was here too, Jacques Dangerville of course, and Pierre Ramonet, exceptional person, and Mr. Renaud from Rayas. And one day I was sitting next to each other

[00:02:33] and Pierre Ramonet was speaking with that very heavy Burgundian accent. And Mr. Renaud was speaking with a southern accent and they were fighting because they were not understanding each other. So I started translating for those guys so that they understand each other.

[00:02:53] That's amazing. And Jallier must have had some influence on you because for most of your career you didn't use stems, right? Yes, in a way. Henri Jallier was someone very special.

[00:03:05] He was really nice with us, the new generation. So we used to have a visit a year, an appointment with him to taste in his cellar with Christophe Rumier, with Etienne Griveaux, sometimes with

[00:03:16] Patrick Bies. And yes, he was a no-stem guy completely and lovely person. Did you see that that generation was working different in the vineyards, your generation? Like Rumier, Griveaux, yourself. First of all, all of us had learned viticulture and enology in university.

[00:03:38] We thought it was really time for a change because a lot of people were not that happy with the general level of quality in Burgundy. And we quickly found out we had to work in the vineyard,

[00:03:52] we had to do it another way. So like thinking about the effect of weed killers, thinking about the effect of heavy fertilizers, chemical fertilizers like nitrogen and all that was something important. And at the same time we were talking about winemaking and I think what

[00:04:14] my generation brought in cellars is being cleaner, being more serious about everything, more control on fermentation, yeast, following everything. But the major thing has been getting better grapes. Dominique emphasized how improved viticulture in the 1980s brought about better grapes to work with

[00:04:39] and this was a point that was also highlighted by exporter Becky Wasserman in her interview in episode 430 of I'll Drink to That. You think the viticulture has gotten better? Oh, immensely so. And it was Christophe Rumier who actually he and a small group,

[00:04:54] Andrei Chelychev wanted to meet the young people. So I had Christophe and Etienne Griveau and Patrick Bees over to have a drink with Andrei. And Christophe said to him, the biggest change is in the viticulture because I guess it was sort of during the Parker era,

[00:05:12] the concentration was in the winery not in the vineyard. And now the concentration has to be for good viticultural practices. And so that was a big change in the 80s. Jean-Pierre De Smet, who founded Domaine des Alarles-Los in Nuit-Saint-Georges in the 1980s

[00:05:30] after moving to that region from another part of France, recalled in episode 455 how the Burgundy Vigneron would frequently get together for group tastings and dinners in the 1980s. People are very friendly in the area and it has not been difficult for us, let's say,

[00:05:51] to be adopted by the community. And specifically, of course, thanks to Jacques and Patrick, with a lot of other producers, and it became a very good group of friends. And for many, many years we have had a dinner every month, every single month, a dinner with

[00:06:14] between 12 and 20 people together in a restaurant or at home, but mainly in a restaurant. And we managed to bring our bottles and it was a great time, yes. Tom Ashby So that was sort of the tasting group with Rumier and… Jean-Pierre De Smet

[00:06:30] Yes, Christophe, Dominique Lafon, Véronique Drouin, they were there, yes. Tom Ashby You can tell how those group tastings that Jean-Pierre referred to allowed for vintners to get a handle on what certain choices in the

[00:06:47] winery would then mean for the resulting wines. Here's what Dominique Lafon said about the topic of de-stemming Pinot Noir, for instance. Dominique Lafon As a joke, I always say that Côte d'Aubonne might have been more wealthy than Côte d'Aunis

[00:07:01] because we could afford a de-stemmer. Tom Ashby Because Lafarge de-stems, for example. Dominique Lafon Lafarge de-stems, Dangerin de-stems, Demontille was de-stemming also. And yeah, most of the people I saw in the Côte d'Aubonne were de-stemming, but Rumier was doing… he

[00:07:17] was de-stemmed. Griveaux was also de-stemmed. Rousseau was de-stemmed. So the leaders of all clusters at that time were Patrick Bies, amazing wines, of course, D.R.C., Dujacque, and later on, Jean-Pierre Desmet at Domaine de Larneau. But they were all friends, so we could compare and talk

[00:07:39] about it and talk about all these techniques and see how it was going. Tom Ashby That seems like something that maybe your father's generation or people of that era wouldn't have had a chance to do, that kind of tasting group.

[00:07:49] Griveaux No, because I think it was a time when everybody was very jealous of each other. When it was hard, it was tough to sell wine. I remember Patrick Bies' father, Simon Bies, telling me, you know, one day I came to visit

[00:08:07] and I told him, I told him, oh, I have another appointment this afternoon with clients. I have too much at the moment. It takes a lot of my time. And he just told me, listen,

[00:08:20] when I was young, we could hear a car coming in Savigny. Everybody was by the door expecting the guy would stop at our place to buy wine. So don't complain. Tom Ashby In the 80s, things really started to take off, right?

[00:08:34] Griveaux Yeah. When I started working with Becky, that was when the dollar was 10 to the franc, and it was crazy. Crazy. The market opened in the US. The wines were not that expensive in Burgundy. And as I told you before, I could sell wine on the

[00:08:52] phone. Tom Ashby Christophe Rumier is one of the people who was very much involved in the changing situation for vintners in the 1980s in Burgundy. And in this interview that's coming up, you'll hear him

[00:09:04] mention how that period affected him and his choices. I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business. I'm Levi Dalton. Erin Scala And here's our show today.

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[00:10:33] Ready to ensure the lifespan of your wines? Go to dm-closures.com forward slash idtt to learn more. That's D I A M dash closures with an S dot com forward slash IDTT for more information. Christophe Rumié on the show today from Chambon-Moussigny. Hello, sir. How are you?

[00:10:57] It's a pleasure to be with you here and I'm doing fine. So your domain is called Domain Georges Rumié, still to this day, although there is also a Christophe Rumié label. And Georges Rumié was your grandfather?

[00:11:08] Georges Rumié was my grandfather who started the family estate in 1924. He married a woman whose family had already a small estate and also a small negotiation business. They would purchase some wine to other producers of the village and they would bottle a part of that, but also

[00:11:30] they would sell, you know, in the twenties, lots of people were not bottling. They were selling their wines in casks and they were doing something like that. When my grandparents married, they

[00:11:41] received the estate, the vineyards as a dowry. But the value of the vines of this time was not much. It was very little value because these were times where it was difficult to live with wine.

[00:11:55] My grandfather was coming from a farming family in the Western part of Burgundy where no vine is growing. There were cattle and cereals and forest as well. So he had to learn about viticulture,

[00:12:11] the vine, what has to be the philosophy for a winemaker, also how to manage a team and everything. He was just a farmer and his first contacts brought him to the Comte de Vauguer, whose

[00:12:27] family estate is very famous. Probably the contact went quite well because the Comte de Vauguer offered him to become his team manager in the vineyard. After my grandfather had made the first vintages of his own wine with his wife's family estate, the Comte de Vauguer realized my

[00:12:49] grandfather was able to make good wines and he offered him to be his winemaker. This is how my grandfather was able to make his own wine because he had a salary from the Vauguer estate. Also, before selling everything, he would keep one barrel per appellation for estate bottling

[00:13:12] to distribute to his wife's family. This is how he started to estate bottle some of his production. Because that was actually pretty early for estate bottling. There were very few people

[00:13:23] who were doing it, even though it was distributed to the family and so it wasn't sold to the states or anything like that. Very few established estates were bottling their production, yes. Very few wines from Burgundy were going overseas.

[00:13:38] You mentioned De Vauguer there and that's one of the larger landholders in terms of crews in the Chambault-Moussigny area, like Moussigny, Beaumar, Amoureuse. I think a lot of people think of Rumié and De Vauguer as very different things, but actually

[00:13:55] your family has had a lot of history working at De Vauguer. So your grandfather worked there and then your uncle worked there. Yes, my uncle, who is the second son of my grandparents, took my grandfather's place in 1955 as the manager of Domaine De Vauguer, from 55 until 1985.

[00:14:19] So it was your grandfather from the mid-20s to 55? Yes. And then your uncle took that. Yes. What's kind of interesting about that is that that was the older brother of your father. And so that uncle theoretically could have stayed

[00:14:34] and done the estate side, he could have done Rumié, but he chose not to do that. He took probably the better paying gig and went to go work for De Vauguer. Also it was a question of personality. My father was more a discreet person and probably said,

[00:14:53] you choose and I take the position that you will live free. But your grandfather, George, he must have been a fairly affable person because he made a good relationship very quickly with De Vauguer and then he made a friendship with Ponell in a period of

[00:15:08] time where Nagos and Domaines didn't always get along. Yeah, exactly. Nagos and Vintners were not immediate friends. They were not meant to be friends. But in the Bonne-Marre, some vineyards came to be on sale in 1952. The Bellorget family

[00:15:31] who was selling their Bonne-Marre, they had a big holding of Bonne-Marre and they offered to Bernard Clerc, Domaine Clerc d'Ahu at this time, to purchase this vineyard of Bonne-Marre. My grandfather knew Bernard Clerc quite well. For Bernard Clerc, this was too big a portion

[00:15:51] of Bonne-Marre to purchase, even though the price was very fair. He said, well, I have to find someone else just to make shares in the Bonne-Marre and we divide. He approached my grandfather for that. My grandfather said, oh yeah, okay,

[00:16:07] but that's also a little too much for me, for my pocket. We should find a third person. They approached Jean Ponell, a negotiant in Bonne-Marre, but also they had an estate in the family of Ponell. The three of them have purchased the Bellorget section of Bonne-Marre.

[00:16:33] They make shares in that. It's how my grandfathers introduced their children, my mother and my father. It's after they purchased the vineyard of Bonne-Marre that my parents met at the Vendange. Between Ponell, De Vauguerie and Domaine Georges Rumier,

[00:16:53] they made only one picking team of people. My mother was picking in this team and it's how she met my father. They married in 54. Because your mother was a Ponell? Yes,

[00:17:06] my mother was a Ponell. I'll just kind of go back to this idea that Georges seems to have been a sort of extraordinary person because when you think that he entered the region in the 20s,

[00:17:16] and of course he wasn't from that far away, but he was a cattle farmer, a cereal farmer, a man who looked after the forest. He comes to a new place. He starts an entirely different

[00:17:25] career looking after vines and as you said, trying to manage a team. He quickly gets a pretty prestigious job. He makes a friendship with Ponell and then he bought some of the key parcels. Some of the key arrangements happened during his tenure in terms of either

[00:17:40] metillage or actual purchase. A lot of the parcels, that's the time that they came in, in the 50s. Oh yes, some of the vineyards were coming from the Conquin family, so my grandmother's

[00:17:52] family. But there are serious holdings that came also in the 40s and 50s where they were able to purchase vineyards for nothing almost. My father always told me that at this time, purchasing the

[00:18:09] Bonne Mare, the production of two years was paying the purchase of the vineyard and today it's no longer like that. It's about a hundred years now. Probably. Something like that. Yes, probably. So your grandfather died when you were about seven years old? Exactly, yes, I was seven.

[00:18:29] So you probably don't remember him that much. No, no, very little. But were there written records? Did he keep a diary or were there notes around? I wish he was, but no, I have nothing.

[00:18:42] And I've questioned my father, but also my uncles and they said, oh no, no, I've never seen any notes taken by my dad. And so there's nothing. Nothing that I can guess on what was his

[00:18:59] technical proceedings or key point of several vintages. I've also no personal notes about wine tasting, wine impressions, the way he was feeling with nothing. You've tried some of those wines though. You've tried wines from the 40s and 50s that he made.

[00:19:19] I'm lucky with that because he was bottling some wines even in the 20s for the family purpose. Some were leftovers, not much, but enough to taste once in a while old wines from those periods.

[00:19:35] And the wines immediately fascinated me. These were so close to perfection sorts of wines that I say, I would like to do something that kind one day. And what is fascinating with these wines,

[00:19:51] by the way, is the fact that with very little means, electricity, yes, but that's all in very, very modest means. And with no specific intentions, they were achieving perfect wines. So it influenced me a lot on the fact that after all winemaking has to be extremely gentle. It

[00:20:15] doesn't mean a lot. The quality of the wine is probably somewhere else and it has to lay in the vineyard then. If it's not the winemaking that makes the style of the wine, it's the vineyard that provides it. And I'm convinced with this very much.

[00:20:29] Tomas. He was doing vineyard management and helping make the wines at De Vogue Way from some of the same crews. Have you had a chance to do any side-by-sides there or look comparatively on those kinds of productions?

[00:20:42] Paul. I was able to taste a few times De Vogue Way wines of the 40s and 50s, but these were not in the conditions where I could compare. And I have to admit that

[00:20:58] the De Vogue Way wines of the 40s and 50s that I have tasted carry the same style as my grandfather's wines left at home. They really have the same balance and flavors. Yeah, they have common points.

[00:21:14] Tomas. Your dad would have been in his 20s when you were born and also when he took over working at Ponell, right? Paul. My father, after he married my mother, so they married in 1957. My grandfather, Jean Ponell, who was managing the Ponell Negotiant and estate,

[00:21:39] offered my father to become his vineyard manager for the Ponell estate. And he started this in 57, yes, by the time they married until 1971. And he was making the wine, only making the wine for the Ponell estate.

[00:22:02] Tomas. And so do you think that there was a lot of overlap with what we would think of as the Rumier wines, the estate bottle wines of Rumier between your grandfather on your father's side

[00:22:14] and your father? Did they do a lot of work together or was it sort of one era and then the next? Paul. My grandfather retired officially, let's say in 1961, but he had already stopped the physical work earlier. They worked together probably 10 years or more even.

[00:22:35] My father was making the wines at the Georges Rumier, let's say after 55, I think he started his own winemaking under my grandfather's observation, let's say. Tomas. So do you think there was a continuity there? Do you think that your dad sort of made

[00:22:53] wine like your grandfather or do you think it was different? Paul. He had had some enology education in Bonn. This was something simple because my father didn't want to insist with studies, but he had learned some enology a little bit. And so probably has

[00:23:13] been influenced also with that. I'm sure he has changed several steps in the winemaking by comparison to his own father, which is normal after all. It's too bad probably, but we never

[00:23:23] spoke of that. And I don't know why, because it seemed to me natural to take the management after my father, the way it was and he transmitted it telling me, well, you do what you think is good

[00:23:37] to do with no reference to his own experience in fact. Tomas. So you were born in 58 and then by the 80s, you were working with your dad at the Domain. Paul. Yeah. I started full-time in 81

[00:23:49] after my military service and after I had passed my own enology diploma also. And I was not meant to stay. This was not something we had clearly decided with my father, but finally I never moved out. Tomas. Did you think about doing something else for a while?

[00:24:15] I didn't know what to do. I was very much interested in mathematics, physics. So I started to study in university around that with no specific intention. I knew that winemaking was interesting me for precisely the biology, the mechanism of it. I knew little about wine itself.

[00:24:40] I had no specific taste myself. I had appreciated several wines many times and I liked it, but I didn't have any kind of preference or nothing. So it was an empty page for me. I mean,

[00:24:55] I said at a certain point, well, okay, you will do a little bit of math, but you are not good enough to do research on that or physics, what to do finally. I said, maybe you can

[00:25:08] go for enology, learn about that. You will discover something else. This is still a bit of science. And so I liked it in fact. And so I obtained my diploma and I said to my father,

[00:25:20] now I'm ready and what should I do? I can work a little bit with you. And my father didn't really, it was a little too early for him to have his son in with him. And he said, okay, maybe if you want

[00:25:35] to help us a little bit, this was pruning time. Come and prune and then you do something else. And so I came and I stayed. Adam And it's a really interesting time when you were in school because of the way it worked, because Jacques-Faise essentially went back to

[00:25:52] school to get his enology diploma after he had already been making wine for a decade. You were in the same class. So generationally, you became friends, you joined a tasting group, Lafon, Patrick Bies. It was a really interesting time to come in, late seventies, early eighties.

[00:26:11] Paul Yes. It's a small world. I mean, Jacques-Faise is still living a hundred meters away from the Claude Labussiere. So of course I knew him and met him several times, many times, let's say. He has always

[00:26:27] been very friendly and very open to the young guy who was just playing around only. And we became friends at the university because yes, he spent some time at the university learning in the same time as me. And so we became more friends at this time. I

[00:26:51] probably have learned more about winemaking details with him, from him than from my father, I think. Adam But it seems to have gone the other way too. It seems that certain things that you did, he picked up on later, like Delayed Malo, for example.

[00:27:11] Hey, it's Levi. And I just want to break in here for a moment because what is particularly interesting about this moment in the interview is that I also have tape of Jacques-Faise talking about his relationship with Christophe Rumier from his perspective. And let me play that

[00:27:26] clip for you right now. Jacques-Faise I think one of the first decisions is influenced by Christophe Rumier. Christophe Rumier is having always Late Malolactic. And I love this result. Christophe is pretty someone I trust more in winemaking. And before

[00:27:48] the arrival of Jeremy and Diana and Alec, if I had a problem, I will say, Christophe, come taste my wines and tell me what you feel. So in 99, we, with Jeremy already there,

[00:28:04] we have same wine in a cold cellar and in a normal cellar. And one part does a Late Malolactic. We like the result. And since 99, we try to have always Late Malolactic.

[00:28:19] I think we never made as good wine as we make today. I think by the quality of selection of the lees, we can leave the wine on the lees nearly all their life. And I think it's something new to

[00:28:37] me. That's a lees such a plus for the wine. And so I'm very pleased with the result. And some people ask me if I prefer to drink old wine I made. No, I much prefer to drink the wines made with the young generation.

[00:29:01] Adam So there's a couple of things in there. And one is that with a colder cellar, you were getting longer mallows. And that's because if you warm the cellar, the mallow goes faster. And so you then built a cooler cellar. And then moving since 99,

[00:29:18] the mallows have been delayed. Christophe Let's start later. Adam And then the second part of that was about lees. And it sounds like you're saying that the lees are cleaner. So you can leave the wine on it longer because the sorting is better? Christophe

[00:29:34] When the sorting is better, then before putting in cask, the sorting of the lees I would say, take the bulb out, look at the lees. And if they like the lees, we'll move the lees up before we

[00:29:51] put in cask so we'd have some lees in the cask. Adam So there's less racking now than there may have been? Christophe There is no racking. Often some wine has one racking. Sometimes there's no racking before bottling. Adam And so that would have been a change

[00:30:06] since what you were doing in the 70s? Christophe Yeah. My trend in the 70s and 80s would have been to rack after malolactic. And now we don't rack after malolactic. Adam What Jacques is describing is a big shift in his approach to the wines at Domaine du Jacques,

[00:30:23] and a shift that was affected by his conversations with Christophe Rumié, and to better understand what was happening at Domaine du Jacques before this change, let me play for you something that Jean-Pierre De Smet said in his interview.

[00:30:36] Jean-Pierre was working with Jacques Saisse at Domaine du Jacques in the 1970s and 1980s before Jacques made that shift in his approach to the timing of malo. Jean-Pierre De Smet contrasts the timing of a later malo with what he found when he was working

[00:30:51] at Domaine du Jacques back at that time, and then also what he found when he was working later at Domaine de Larlot in Nuit-Saint-Georges. Adam When would malo typically happen for the red wines? Jean-Pierre Typically it's the spring after the harvest.

[00:31:08] At Larlot, it was earlier, generally speaking before Christmas. And I think that's because of the world cluster. I don't have no explanation, no chemical, technical explanation for that, but I really think that it comes because of the world cluster. Discussing with friends,

[00:31:30] with Patrick Bies, with Jacques Saisse, with Alain Grayot, all of us are using mainly world clusters and we have early malos. So that's why I think there is a relationship between the early

[00:31:44] malos and people say that it's better if it's later. I don't know. They are going through when they won't. Adam Jacques Saisse began working with a delayed malo at Domaine du Jacques in 1999,

[00:32:00] and the timing of when malo happens is something that Jeremy Saisse, his son, described in episode 143 of All Drink to That as one of the handful of big decisions you can make about your wine making. Later in this interview, Christophe Rumié explains why he became interested in delaying

[00:32:17] the malo in the wines at Rumié and how that affects the time the wines then spend on the Lys. The approach he developed is something that Jacques Saisse would later also adopt as we've discussed. We'll return to Christophe's interview and that explanation about a delayed malo after

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[00:33:08] It seems like there's been an active dialogue over the time. Yeah, we exchanged a lot with Jacques. At that time I had, I've liked some wines but with no specific intentions in the winemaking. And clearly I could taste my father's wines, I could taste Jacques Saisse wines,

[00:33:30] Dujacques wines and obviously the wines are different. I could like the two of them because they are different. And it became interesting for me the fact that there are some actions, some decisions that are made in the winemaking that bring a style. And then,

[00:33:48] you know, these are like Lego bricks that you build up together. Some different elements came together to me which made me think, oh, winemaking is interesting because you create something. You have a grape but you can also bring a part of yourself in it with intentions,

[00:34:07] which was not something I had realized before. And I took influences from many people. Also at this time there was Henri Jaillet who was already becoming more and more famous in the

[00:34:22] beginning of the 80s. And my father said, oh, you should go and visit him. He's making good wines. And I talked a lot with Henri who liked also to exchange with young generation. And I had finally two influence who were making very different wines with very different techniques.

[00:34:47] This was something I've learned a lot of that. And I obtained no recipe, which is a good thing also. I mean, there was nothing that I should do, but I had different influences. And finally, I think my winemaking proceedings, I prefer to say proceedings rather than techniques,

[00:35:08] are a combination of all this. Adam You're one of the more articulate people about winemaking that I've ever met, so we'll definitely get there. But I think it would set the tone a little bit to speak about the vineyard holdings first.

[00:35:20] So the domain Georges Rumier is established physically in Chambol. Most of the vineyards that we have to cultivate are on the village of Chambol-Mueseny also. So we have even included some Bourgogne, Bourgogne Rouge, that are on the flat lands just at the bottom of the hillside

[00:35:39] of Chambol. But the main, the big piece is Chambol-Mueseny, which for people who have traveled to Chambol, to Burgundy and have visited Chambol, you realize that it's a little apart from the national road. It's probably the highest in elevation village of the Côte de Nuit. Most of

[00:36:01] the acreage of Chambol-Appellation is on the hillside. And for us also, for the domain Georges Rumier, the two thirds of the acreage of Chambol-Mueseny is positioned on the hillside. And one third is located on the flatter places where we have a deeper soil with more clay, etc.

[00:36:24] Altogether these are very fragmented. I could bottle separately each of them of Chambol-Mueseny, but I prefer the idea to combine them together so that this represents more what is Chambol if you combine the different sections together. And it's also a way to provide a Chambol wine which

[00:36:46] is less under the influence of the vintage because year in, year out, it's better this place, it's better this other. So the final blend is more into the fine balance around what the village has to be.

[00:37:01] That's the way I proceed. Then we have some Chambol-Mueseny Premier Cru. In fact, in the village there are also some sections of Premier Cru that I prefer to blend to the village because

[00:37:15] I don't have enough of it and I'm not always happy with the crop. So there's a piece of Chambol Premier Cru Les Plantes and Chambol Premier Cru Les Fueys. I like Les Fueys a lot,

[00:37:27] it's a very good place, but my section is not the top quality. I'm not happy with the fruit it provides so I blend it to the village. Altogether those Premier Cru that are, as we say,

[00:37:40] disclassified into the village represents a little less than 10% of the volume of village I produce. But we have also some Premier Cru named Les Combottes which is a very good situation. The riverbed of an ancient river that was coming out of the canyon that is behind Chambol.

[00:38:04] You have to imagine that underneath the surface of the ground, it's a pile of stones left after the river has moved them and all that was filled up with some clay. It's on the edge to Charmes,

[00:38:19] very well located, and so I bottle it separately. We have Chambol Premier Cru Les Cra, which is a larger section, which is a very, very good vineyard because it's all facing southeast on marley soils, very rich with limestone, dusty limestone. We call it active limestone because

[00:38:45] that limestone when it's in very tiny particles like this has a great influence on the vine growing. It does not encourage at all the vigor and so in this place we obtain deep wines, very

[00:39:04] concentrated. I don't like the word concentrated but yes, we have a great potential in this vineyard. And we have a serice section with 175 hectare which is a large section. Adam I feel like that wine and the Clos de Boussiers are the wines that a lot of people

[00:39:18] have had because there's enough of them quantity wise. Because there is enough of it, yes, and yeah this is right. The Mauray Saint-Denis Clos de Boussiers is 2 hectares 59 on one piece of a vineyard which is a real clos. Clos means a piece of land which is surrounded with

[00:39:40] a wall and it's a real clos built in the 12th century by monks. The name La Boussiere comes from the Abbé, the Abbé de la Boussière and it's never been divided over time. The ownership has

[00:39:56] changed over time. My grandfather purchased in 53 but it's never been divided. But this is a different situation. This is Mauray Saint-Denis, the next village to the north of Chambol. The quality of the soil is very different. It's much more clay there and a thick layer of clay

[00:40:18] on stones and it makes a specific wine. By comparison to Chambol it has bigger structure, more tannins. It's always slower to age also. One of the walls is on the border of Mauray Saint-Denis and Chambol. And one of the ways

[00:40:38] you've expressed it I think quite well is that that wine is often expressive of Mauray Saint-Denis on the palate and Chambol on the nose. Yeah, I like that. Yes, I like this idea. The feet of the wine stay in Mauray Saint-Denis but the head is in Chambol.

[00:40:54] And how would you, I mean you've said it a little bit about the clay, but the difference between Mauray Saint-Denis and Chambol in broad strokes, what is the difference? Everything in Burgundy is limestone and clay. What makes a real difference is the proportion

[00:41:09] of each other. And Chambol is very stony so it's more calcare, more limestone. When Mauray Saint-Denis has more clay often and so is Gevraet Chambertin, it's more clay. I think Mauray Saint-Denis is where the clay layer is the thickest probably.

[00:41:31] And something you've mentioned before about Clos de Bussière is that there's a little iron in there, in the soil. In this clay, yeah. And that also it's a double fault and the limestone has actually

[00:41:42] kind of gone vertical so the kind of limestone changes a lot within the monopole. Exactly, yeah, which is very peculiar. I've been explained that by a geologist, Francoise Vannier, who has made studies and she said, you have a very, very peculiar vineyard because

[00:42:01] instead of sliding, the stones have bent. And so yes, of course, when you move on the surface of the Clos de Bussière, there's a change in the age of the limestone. When I spoke with Benjamin

[00:42:14] Leroux, he used to work at Clos d'Epinel and he really felt that the monks had got it right. The walls were in the right place for a good wine. He always did these micro-vinifications and he just

[00:42:25] found the whole thing was better if you just blended it. And very diverse inside the walls, soil types. But he found that they had put the walls in the right place. Do you feel the same

[00:42:37] way about Clos de Bussière? Because it kind of feels like you do, like that it's diverse but it's a good whole. Oh yeah, I totally fulfill that. That's right. I think monks had a certain instinct

[00:42:48] to observe everything that was helpful for agriculture and they positioned the Clos de Bussière, I mean the walls just at the place where the geology underneath has something specific. And it's right, it's exactly where it has to be. For one of your iconic wines, the Bon Marre,

[00:43:12] a portion is close to Maurice Antony and a portion is Chambord, and the soil changes, right? Yeah but in Bon Marre, talking about Bon Marre, the soil doesn't change with the commune border.

[00:43:26] It's opposite. It's from the top of the hillside to the bottom. And the top of the hillside in Bon Marre is Marley, same type as Lécra, with a specific fossil that you can find in this place

[00:43:44] which are very tiny oysters fossils. They call it Austrea acuminata and the same type as those you find also in Chablis. And in this place we have that very dusty sort of limestone mixed

[00:44:03] together with the marl, with the clay finally. And it makes viticulture a different kind than to the bottom of the hillside of Bon Marre where we have a solid rock basement, limestone of course, with a layer of clay mixed with pebbles to the surface. Those two different geologies,

[00:44:30] logically under the certain Burgundy sense of terroir, they should have made two different appellations because the wines we obtained from those two different geologies are very different. So they would have provided two different appellations. Historically this is one

[00:44:51] appellation. Again the owners were nuns here and they had the whole section and they were probably, I don't think there is any proof anywhere, but they were probably making the wine all together.

[00:45:10] And when appellation came as a law, everything was accepted as one appellation. But the wines are very different. But after all there is a good sense of that I think. The two wines are different

[00:45:22] but they combine very well together and I think the blend of the two different wines makes a third wine which is better than the sum of the two parts. Because you vinify them separately and then you

[00:45:36] blend them. Yeah that's just to play a little bit with the winemaking, just to have the pleasure to see the result of those two origins. So I like to make them separate and blend them together

[00:45:51] because I believe that's the real Bonne Mare. Not everyone has parcels in both sectors but you do. And is it fair to say that the Terre Rouge is the deeper more concentrated one and the Terre Blanche

[00:46:03] is the more elegant kind of more airy one? Yeah so that's it. You get it right. I think the Terre Rouge, we can call it Terre Rouge, it's not red. It's brown, brown-red if you want but

[00:46:15] it's not red in fact. But it makes a wine that is deep, fruit driven, very round and by difference the White Salt which is upper on the hillside again, it makes a leaner wine but more graceful,

[00:46:33] more aromatic, more probably floral driven in terms of aromatics and more minerally in its texture. And I like the combination of those two styles in fact. Because your dad didn't use to

[00:46:50] blend them. So it's something that you do, that you decided to do? He didn't blend because he had kept this habit from his own father to keep them separately and to sell them separately also.

[00:47:05] Because of course you have to remember that most of producers and Domaine Rumié included were selling some, eventually all of their production to negotiants. For my grandfather and then my father having two different styles of Bon Mart to offer was a

[00:47:28] comfortable situation to sell to different negotiations, eventually to different prices also I don't know. And because of that my grandfather, my father then were keeping those two cuvées of Bon Mart separate. And when it came to my father the idea to increase slightly

[00:47:48] the proportion of estate bottling, he kept the habit to have those two bottlings of Bon Mart separate. And it's how he was proceeding with no specific and I found it very strange and I said

[00:48:01] that to him and said, we should have two different labels for that. Telling what is the cuvée that you have sold here. And he said, oh it doesn't matter it's still Bon Mart. And I said, okay

[00:48:17] maybe that's better if we try a little bit to blend them together and we see if that's better or not. And I started under his control, I started to blend a little bit of those two cuvées just to

[00:48:32] prove him that it was an interesting wine. And I convinced him finally and so we blend the two cuvées of Bon Mart and release only one. I think this is the vintage 87, the first where it was

[00:48:46] only one cuvée of Bon Mart. Not just with your own wines but for multiple producers' wines, I often find in terms of how the wines are that there seems to be more of a connection between Amoureuse and Moussigny than there is between Moussigny and Bon Mart.

[00:49:02] Oh yeah that's for sure. It's as if there was a divide in the middle of Chambolle. If you take this divide from the canyon, from the Combe down to the bottom of the hillside so the north

[00:49:18] part turned towards more Saint-Denis where L'Écra and Bon Mart are laying for instance is a little bit more masculine in style, a little bit deeper, bigger wines by opposition to the south part of the hillside so where Amoureuse and Moussigny are laying where we have more

[00:49:43] fragrant food, more elegant sorts of wines, more feminine as people say sometimes if it has a certain sense with wine. Yes, it's interesting to have that sort of a position in fact of styles. The Moussigny is one of your smallest parcels.

[00:50:03] It's not my smallest but it's the smallest section of vine for one appellation yes. It's 0.0996 hectare which is positioned to the northwest angle of Moussigny at the top of it in fact. If you prolongate from the top rows of Moussigny down the hillside you reach my Amoureuse almost.

[00:50:30] It's just down the slope. And how do you find them to be different as wines Moussigny and Amoureuse? They have common points for the family of aromatics they express but the structures are different. Amoureuse is extremely soft and silky and could eventually provide you a feeling of

[00:50:56] a sweetness which is none but that sort it's very tender where Moussigny is more vibrant a little bit more alive and more minerally a little bit tighter. And then you make a couple wines from the

[00:51:13] appellation area of Gervais-Chambertin. So you make a Ruchotte which is an incredible wine and not that yours are but and then you also make a Mazweier that you label as charm. Exactly. My father contracted the Ruchotte-Chambertin in 1977 when an investor,

[00:51:32] Monsieur Bonnefond has purchased a piece of Ruchotte that was for sale at this time. In 1977 a family based in Gervais-Chambertin needed to solve an heritage problem so they had to sell their holding of Ruchotte, hold what they had. And Charles Rousseau, Domaine Rousseau was approached

[00:51:58] to purchase it but he felt that it was too much for him. He turned to his friend George Mounier Domaine Mounier-Régibourg to purchase with him and also my father. And my father said I'm sorry

[00:52:13] I don't have the money to purchase this. And this is when Monsieur Bonnefond came and purchased the vineyard and provided my father the farming of it as a sharecropping contract. And I took over from my father this contract in 1984. And same year one of our friends said oh

[00:52:36] I would like to have one day a piece of vineyard for me because I like wine and I would like to have a piece of vineyard. We said okay we will check if we can find one available. And we heard

[00:52:49] of this piece of Mazoyer-Chambertin that was for sale. And this is how also I contracted this the Mazoyer. As you mentioned it we label it the Charme because you have the choice to name

[00:53:04] Mazoyer or Charme. It means charming in French so it's... It is charming which is also something that applies to the wine because it's very very very nice wine. And pretty different than the Ruchot. Yeah there are again here this sort of a position of style. Ruchot is positioned

[00:53:22] quite high on the hillside at a place where there is some cool air drifting from the Combe of Gevrey. So it's a later to ripen sort of place and it's also a place where the soil is very very

[00:53:40] stony. Ruchot means little rocks, little stones and it's a very stony place. It makes a very very elegant very pure almost Chambol type sort of Chambertin. And the Mazoyer-Charme coming from the Mazoyer makes a rounder very sexy type of wine. Very charming very very nice wine.

[00:54:08] Different type of wines. Those two are shaped totally different. It's interesting to me that the Meunier-Giborg parcel of Ruchot and the Rousseau parcel on yours were all sort of the same holding because Rousseau has the clôture Ruchot right? And that's it's a little different

[00:54:25] like the soil is a little different and it's a little bit above the path. Yes yes and Charles Rousseau purchased this piece because it had a specific place. It's a clôture and it's also

[00:54:40] positioned on a place where there is a type of limestone we call Oolit. Oolitic limestone. Thank you for the translation. I have a little bit because I'm just a side to the south of the

[00:54:58] Clôture de Ruchot. We have a little bit of this Oolit but not as much as in the Clôture. And the Meunier section of Ruchot is just below the Rousseau Clôture de Ruchot.

[00:55:11] And as you mentioned there is a lane and this lane is just positioned on the fault. And so below the fault there is no longer this sort of limestone. It's another type but all together it's very good. Ruchot is very good.

[00:55:29] Winemaking aside it seems to me like yours is more akin to the Meunier G. Bourgoin and maybe for this reason. Yes probably. What I mean by that is there's a textural presence that almost reminds me of Nebbiolo and with the Clôture de Ruchot from Rousseau

[00:55:47] it's actually very pretty. The fruit's very pretty and it's less textural. That's what I'm referring to. I see, I see. Yeah it's right. It's probably because of the Oolit. Sometimes when people have come in they've said historically, of course clones are a different

[00:56:04] part of this, but historically the vine material in Gévray and Brochon is different than the kind of vine material that you might find in Chambault. And since you work in really important vineyards

[00:56:15] in both of those places how do you feel about that kind of comment? I know sometimes you work with clones but do you feel that the vine material is different in these places? Yes there's something, it's right. Certainly because at a certain time people in the village

[00:56:31] were working a little bit together and they had over time developed village selection let's say. I also think and we noticed this that the Pinot Noir is not a very stable varietal and it finds ways to adapt itself to the place it is grown. The adaptation makes it

[00:56:56] a little different by the way it grows, the dimension of the berries, number of seeds and things like that may vary a little bit. These are adaptations to the place they grow and it's probably something that happens also for the village selections. So do you find a different

[00:57:16] approach then in the vineyard or the cellar? I've heard some people say things like they would use whole cluster on one and not another. No I don't think like that, at the contrary I prefer to manage

[00:57:28] the same way the winemaking and then only the difference of what the grapes contain makes a difference in taste in the wine. I prefer to proceed the same way. But sometimes yes you have to proceed the viticulture work on different ways,

[00:57:46] different periods also because they do not have the same growth speed and not the same disease sensibility also. And so yeah of course we have to adapt because we need to be close to the

[00:58:02] viticulture for every specific place in fact. But after all when it's about winemaking I prefer to generalize the techniques the same so that the differences are just related to what the grapes

[00:58:15] are containing. Do you find that there's less virus in Gevre? Yes and in Moray also. We have more viruses in Chambol. It's probably related to the shallow earth layers and then in that shallow place where the root system is established because it's more shallow we have a higher

[00:58:40] concentration of worms, the nematodes that are making the virus to travel from a vine to another. There's more clay in Gevre and there's more clay Moray-Sant'Aigne and there seems to be less virus

[00:58:53] and so maybe the nematodes don't travel as well in that kind of soil. They dilute into the thickness of the ground I think. And it also seems that the yields are less in Chambol so that would make

[00:59:03] sense too because... Because it's poorer soils. Naturally it gives you something else. Yes exactly it has an influence on that and yes it's right this is what I mentioned about the white

[00:59:16] soil what we call white soil. These are places where it does not encourage any kind of vigor in the vine and you can see the result of that the consequence of that the berries are always smaller

[00:59:28] in those places than they are for instance in the Clos de la Bussière where it's more clay and because the size of the berry is smaller there is a bigger proportion of skin to the volume of juice

[00:59:42] they contain which has also an influence on the style of the wine. Because when people talk about vine material in Gevre they often say that the berries are bigger than say Vaughn or Chambol.

[00:59:54] And the other thing that's so kind of notable about Gevre is how many people seem to have vines that are over 100 years old. Like many people. Yeah yeah which is rare in Chambol. Well yes that's right it's probably... I didn't think like that never yeah you are right.

[01:00:11] It's probably related to again the the virus because when you have virus in the vines it doesn't help to make them age very well so probably related to that. There are a couple

[01:00:24] other things to mention so at one time you made Clos Vaughn from two different parcels and then from one parcel and then from no parcels so you don't make it anymore and then you just started

[01:00:33] making an Echerzo and then you do make a white wine so yeah probably we should talk about those briefly before we touch on some other issues. All right okay and so we had the Clos Vaughn until

[01:00:45] 1996. I made it 14-15 years. We had two pieces, two holdings. The one at the bottom which was representing a third of the Clos Vaughn Echerzo and two thirds were positioned higher by the Grand

[01:01:01] Moteuil Pertuis. A very good place. That's one of the best places. It's one of the best probably but my cousin took this Grand Moteuil Pertuis section first and so I had to deal from 1986 to

[01:01:17] 1996 with just the bottom of the Clos Vaughn section and it made a different type of Clos Vaughn, a little thicker, a little more rustic in style but that aged very well so it goes very

[01:01:32] well in aging. Now the Clos Vaughn was a different type of approach to winemaking. It told me at least that not searching for too much of extraction was sometimes a very good attitude because

[01:01:44] to make a real Chambol which has everything in contents to age well you have to extract a little bit but when it's about Clos Vaughn it's a different attitude so it was interesting to match those two

[01:01:58] sorts of winemakings in fact. Sometimes I feel like people who grow up in a place have the view of how to make wine of that place and then sometimes they get a parcel somewhere else

[01:02:08] and they make it as if it were that. Yeah it's another what we said before about the Ruchot for instance when you compare the Ruchot from Eric Rousseau to the Munier & Sisters and mine

[01:02:20] we are on three different villages making the same appellation and of course we intake, we bring in the wine a little bit of ourselves and also the way we think around wine and it's probably

[01:02:32] the reason why the Munier & Sisters Ruchot has a little bit of Vaughn Romané in style in it, mine probably a little bit of Chambol and Eric a little bit of Gevra influences in style.

[01:02:46] When you are in a village that by nature offers you a certain style you get the habit to find to have the feelings of this style and you want it for many of your holdings of vines.

[01:03:01] Something you've pointed out to me sort of in this context before is that you feel that you have red wine yeast and bacteria in your cellar that's associated with making a good red wine ferment in your cellar and for this reason sometimes it's a little more challenging to

[01:03:15] make white and you can see how that would apply to kind of what we're talking about here. If someone had certain kinds of yeast in their cellar in Chambol how it might be more challenging to

[01:03:27] make a wine from somewhere else. We like to say that we do a lot of things and in fact we talk a lot about winemaking but talking about what is the style of a wine from a specific estate

[01:03:43] it's interesting to question where this style which is sometimes recognizable comes from. And often the answer is to say oh because I punch down at this time, I keep this temperature etc blah blah blah around winemaking techniques and sometimes I wonder if it's not something totally

[01:04:04] different that operates in the wine instead of us, instead of our decision. And I believe that yeast strain living in the building are reproducing from a year to another and probably they are part of what builds the estate style. It's part of that, only a part,

[01:04:30] but it counts a lot I believe. And for those same reasons the yeast that have developed in my buildings are designed for red wines and they do not operate as well in the white wine if I make a white wine.

[01:04:46] Same with bacteria and it's probably a reason why making only one little volume of white wine makes it a little bit more challenging because we don't have the same yeasts and bacteria living.

[01:05:05] And if I had a big volume of white wine certainly some strains would develop by themselves and impose themselves. It would be a combination, a nice combination. You can be good on those two because you make a certain mass of each which is not my case.

[01:05:24] That's not to take away from your Corton Charlemagne because it's very good. It's in that kind of Pernault steely style. It's brisk, it needs a little time. Yes the vineyard section is laying

[01:05:36] on the Pernant Vergeles on the west exposition which is a little less warm than east or south because it takes the sun directly to the ground only in the afternoon whereas if you are on the

[01:05:54] east side of the hillside then you receive the first sun rays in the morning then the temperature raises up until noon and restitutes in the afternoon this heat to the vine which is

[01:06:10] different when you are turned to the west. And it makes then as a consequence also a type of grape that ripens a little later. It makes the Vérezon a little later but also the harvest. And then you just started making Echezot right?

[01:06:27] Yeah we started, the investors had purchased the vineyard in Echezot and asked me if I would be interested in a piece of Echezot and of course I said yes. And this has occurred in 2016. It's a small piece, it's very little.

[01:06:46] So how do you see it working in Flay-Echezot compared to the Gervais-Chambertin and Chambault-Moussigny communes? There's nothing very different from what I know in Chambault for instance. It's a place which is

[01:07:00] en orveau in the terms of terroir, lieu d'hier, which is very warm because it's a place where the wind doesn't blow in that place, it goes above. It operates like an oven almost to the sun. It's a place that is quite quick to ripen.

[01:07:20] I'm looking forward to trying it. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about it so far? I discovered the style and I like it, I like the substance of the wine because it's a very open type of wine. How should I say that? Amoureuse can be very versatile.

[01:07:37] It can reach the top but sometimes be a little bit discreet also. You have to wait then because the style of amoureuse will be more obvious after a few years of aging. When it seems like Echaiseau is more immediately ready to show itself quite well, to express

[01:07:55] everything it contains very well. I make very little of that, it's about two barrels and it does not represent the style of every Echaiseau. At that dimension I cannot mean that. It's the feeling I get so far. To speak generally of what you're looking for in the vineyard,

[01:08:14] some people do the trellising lower, some people do it higher. I think you like to trellis a little higher, right? I'm not the highest but I thought that it was a good idea to edge a little higher the vines

[01:08:30] for a reason that if we want to think what the climate will become if we extrapolate what has been happening the last 20 years to the next 20 years, then we have to change several things

[01:08:45] on the way we manage the canopy. Because the last year has proved that we reach a high level of sugar earlier than the ideal ripeness of the tannins and the aromatics on the grapes.

[01:09:03] I mean, so if you want to recover a good adjustment between those two critical parts of what will be the wine in the future, we should, I think, keep the same canopy exposition to sunshine so that we don't regress as a photosynthesis. But we should find ways

[01:09:29] to lower the average temperature around the grape zone. And a good way would be to project some shade on the grape zone and also on the ground, by the way. And the best way to have

[01:09:43] shades is to grow a little higher so that you project from a row of vine to the next, the shade, and this is what we have done. But there are vintners who do that a little higher

[01:09:58] even than me. I'm not that high yet, but probably we are going to move progressively. Probably this is the approach. And what do you think about the difference between Cordon Royale and Guillault?

[01:10:11] It's mainly a question of fruit quantity because the Royale uses the lower buds on the pruning system. And for the vine, the vine is always more vigorous to the top of the wood system

[01:10:30] rather than to the bottom. With the Royale, we prune with the less vigorous buds. But all of them carry the same level of energy from the plant itself. So it means that every bud

[01:10:46] we keep for the Royale should carry the same kind of fruit. So it makes equal fruits on the vine system, but the volume of grape is less than with Guillault. The disadvantage of the Guillault

[01:11:02] is that it's a long pruning system. So of course we have the last buds on the cane that can have lots of fruits because this is where we have the biggest vigor. And as much as you progress

[01:11:19] down by the trunk of the vine, we have smaller grapes and less of them also. But the advantage is that you can regulate production better than with the Royale. With the Royale, you have to take what is given and there is sometimes very little because the vigor

[01:11:39] is very low. With the Guillault, you can wait until the bud break has operated and everything is growing, the shoots are grown. You can count the number of grapes you have, the amount of berries

[01:11:53] they will provide also, and decide if you go for green harvest. And then you remove the end of the cane grapes rather than the first buds because on the end of the cane,

[01:12:06] then you will have the biggest berries. You can adjust to the vintage conditions better than with the Royale, I think. Do you prefer one in certain situations than the other in another? I mainly prune Guillault because Chambord does not yield a lot and if I convert everything,

[01:12:26] Royale produces nothing. And technically, I feel better with the Guillault. At the Domaine Rumié, we have kept lots of old vines. The Mouzini was planted in 1905 and maybe even earlier, it's not clear. And we have another section in Amoureuse that was planted also in 1928,

[01:12:48] two of them. Some that were planted by my grandfather, we still have a lot of them. If you want to keep your old vine for another decade or more, eventually, you have to not over-crop also. It's something to take in consideration also.

[01:13:08] You prefer to prune back rather than to green harvest, is that correct? I prefer to do things ahead rather than having to do another work, which is very demanding in time which can be the consequence to some mistakes. And so, I think green harvest tells you that,

[01:13:28] oh, there's something that you have to change in the vineyard management, probably by fertilizing less. And frankly, we don't do green harvest on a systematic way. We have had a period of time

[01:13:43] in the 80s where it was still necessary, but it's a long time I've not done of it, even in young vines. Because sometimes the young vines are more vigorous, they produce bigger berries and more crop, but it's not necessary.

[01:13:59] And I think one of the real keys for understanding your work in terms of vineyard work is that you really moved away from chemicals. You really moved away from chemical fertilizers and chemical weed killers, and you went towards using organic fertilizers, and you got rid of chemicals in

[01:14:17] the 80s. And it was kind of your generation that made that realization and started acting on it. People like yourself and Lafon, right? When we take that sort of decision, we are not alone. I mean, we talk and we exchange a lot with

[01:14:31] some friends around what kind of evolution should we go for. And that sort of decision is always a combination of different observations. With Dominique Lafon, because we are good friends, we have talked a lot of that. And also with Jacques Sesse, Gérard Potel, Jacques Dangerville.

[01:14:56] These were people who we've talked a lot also around all this. It was obvious that first, we are exposed as vintners working on the vineyard with the vine, the first exposed to every chemical that you would spray. Of course, it's a necessity to keep the disease away.

[01:15:20] But also, you have to survive. If you operate with poisonous substances, then there is one day that probably the vine survives with no disease, but then these are consequences upon the human being working. And so we said we should try to pay attention to what we spray.

[01:15:42] This was before the mood for everything that is organic, that is now very much into the air. But we were at the period that we started to talk like that.

[01:15:53] And what was the easiest to do was to stop the fertilizers. And in case we have vines that need some fertilization, because some need sometimes, the same parcels of ground are growing vines for

[01:16:10] more than a thousand years in the same place. So we have to restitute a part of something. But stop with chemical things and turn to organic composts and things like that. This is the first evolution I have given. And I said, okay, if I'm logical, there's also

[01:16:27] something living on the ground that we need to transfer the nutrients to the roots. And if you want them to survive, we should stop using the weed killers because these have consequences also on what is living on the ground. So I stopped the weed killers. Also,

[01:16:46] Dominique Lafon and many other people like us. And the other idea behind all that was also about winemaking because winemaking occurs with yeasts. And the yeasts are, some of them, not all, but

[01:17:03] some of them are coming with the fruit from the vine. And if you have sprayed chemicals, then the yeast may not survive or there are less of them and maybe not all the strains that you would like

[01:17:17] to operate because yeasts are mushrooms, but also are mushrooms the diseases that affect the vines. So mildew, powdery mildew, these are mushrooms. And so the chemicals that we would spray to protect out of this disease would have effects on the yeasts and residuals eventually would come

[01:17:43] with the fruit to the fermenters. And if you want native yeast to operate and having proper fermentations dynamics, then we should have no residual. We should have not sprayed on the season also dangerous substances. So it came like natural to get rid of everything that was very perfect

[01:18:09] molecules probably by efficiency, but that could have also very bad consequences. And this is how we became more organic and eventually now totally organic, but it didn't come all of a sudden. It

[01:18:24] didn't happen all of a sudden, you know? There was also an issue with pH, right? That the soil, because it had been exposed to these chemicals, the wines were coming in with a different pH.

[01:18:36] Yeah, it's not the fact of chemicals. It's mainly the fact of certain fertilizers in the 50s, 60s, this was potassium. People realized that potassium had a very great potential to encourage the vine to deliver more fruits. And this has saved some vintages in the 50s

[01:19:02] after war where the vines had almost received no treatment, nothing. The use of some potassium has saved the viticulturists sometimes, but the abuse of this potassium has brought consequences like yes, the pH to go higher because those elements that are provided as feeding to the vine go to

[01:19:31] the sap and then to the juice, the grape contain. And the minerals like potassium buffer the acidity and make the pH a bit higher. So we make a blank period with no potassium

[01:19:49] and I realized the pH by nature came to a good level. We have to accept variations of pH related to the vintage effect. I mean, the climate is different from a year to another, the amount of

[01:20:04] rains also can differ. And so the amount of mineral going to the grapes can be something that has consequences and makes the pH variable from a vintage to another. This is normal to accept, but we have good levels of pH now with no problem.

[01:20:22] But that played into something that was key in your winemaking, which is you were looking for a delay in mallow. You didn't want the mallow to happen right away. And when you had higher pH and

[01:20:33] lower acidity, mallow tends to happen earlier. So there are several thoughts that played into your decision making to delay mallow until the spring. In other words, to not have it happen in the winter after the ferment. But that was one of them.

[01:20:48] It's one of them. The fact that I had noticed that for instance in the vintage like 85, the pH were by nature quite high in that vintage. But the cuvées where the pH kept lower had

[01:21:05] later mallow-lactic fermentations. And I noticed also that those cuvées had lost less color after mallow and less aromatics. The mallow-lactic fermentation was, let's say, more respectful to the integrity of the wines. And so I said, maybe there is something with the time that

[01:21:28] the mallow-lactic fermentation operates. I should try to not encourage the mallow early. And I should try to have a certain amount of time between the end of the alcoholic fermentation and the beginning of the mallow-lactic fermentation. And finally, I realized that it was working quite

[01:21:49] well because the mallow-lactic fermentations then are a little slower and they do not break the balance of the wine as much. And also there's another effect that is, I think, quite interesting. It's the fact that the first consequence of the mallow-lactic fermentation is

[01:22:11] that the pH brings a little higher. And then you have to sulfite the wine to make sure that bacteria would no longer operate after the mallow-lactic fermentation is finished. And if you delay the mallow-lactic fermentation, then you position your sulfite a little later also

[01:22:30] in the aging. And the consequence is that at the time of bottling, you have added less of sulfur, you use less sulfur. And even a time of barrel journey occurs where the pH is at the minimum

[01:22:47] level possible in this wine, which means that it has also consequences on the way the wine is stabilized after the aging in barrel. All things together, the idea of delayed mallow-lactic fermentation was a useful thing. Well, it seems like it has big ramifications. Because you can

[01:23:11] use less sulfur, then the color is darker because sulfur strips color. And it seems like the aromatics are different. Yeah. I believe strongly that the aging of a wine is very much helped with

[01:23:29] a kind of reductive status to the wine. And the best way to keep your wine reductive is to use the lees. And if the mallow-lactic fermentation is delayed, the journey with the lees and with the

[01:23:47] low pH together is longer. And then it makes the wine more probably enriched by the lees themselves, but also because it's a little reductive, we obtain wines with a better depth, a better dimension.

[01:24:06] And I think that eventually also we have less VA. It's not, I think I noticed it, but I discovered it after I've tried the first years. And then the best way above all on vintages

[01:24:25] where you have a certain high pH, if you want to keep away from mallow-lactic fermentation, the only parameter to play with is the temperature. So I had to chill down the wine before we go to

[01:24:40] barrel so that we do not encourage the population of bacteria to develop and start the mallow-lactic fermentation. And altogether, I don't know what counts the more, but there is a result which is helpful and which is encouraging about the stability of the wine, the use of sulfite,

[01:24:59] and also the less VA we do obtain in the wine. And that's actually kind of counter to what you were told in school, right? Like they said, get the mallow done early and you'll avoid VA. But

[01:25:12] your realization basically through tasting was that you could avoid VA, which is volatile acidity, the other way, by actually delaying mallow through the use of cold temperature. Yeah, it was contrary to what the oenologists were promoting as ideas, of course, because

[01:25:29] the experience with past vintages sometimes was encouraging to precautions. Because, of course, the 50s, the 60s, this is the beginning of the oenology science, let's say. I think in the 50s, nobody knew what was happening during mallow-lactic fermentation. When they discovered

[01:25:54] these were lactic bacteria that were operating, they said, oh, okay, so what could we do? But before that, some people had accidents in the barrel journeys because they had wines going under

[01:26:13] volatile acidity. And so they said, oh, well, we should provocate this and sulfite so that we don't have this VA development. And the oenologists were promoting that, in fact. But maybe because

[01:26:29] I have studied a little bit of oenology, because of trying to do things different than from my father's time, but by nature, I'm a human being. So, of course, sometimes you want to prove your

[01:26:41] father that you can change the ways and you can do better than him. I wanted to do things different. And so all that together, I said, oh, maybe it could be a good idea to do a late mallow instead

[01:26:55] of early. And the other thing is that you talked to some people that had experience as winemakers for a long time without going to school, because you were in a school generation. You were in the

[01:27:08] late 70s moving into the 80s, but there were people still around, like D'Andreville, who that wasn't their generation. No. And they weren't experiencing the problem and they were okay if mallow took a while. People like Lafon's dad, he just let it roll, right? He was just fine with

[01:27:27] it if it took forever. And he had a really cold cellar, so it took forever. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, keeping an eye to different experiences of people was very helpful also, yes. Certainly at my father's time, people would not dare to exchange about technical points.

[01:27:47] They were a little bit jealous to keep their methods a little secret. They didn't want to share as much as my generation started to talk and share several technical points more easily.

[01:28:00] It seems like that was a big deal, frankly. I mean, that seems to have really set Burgundy onto being quite successful. Just that, the fact that people tasted with each other and talked to each other, it seems like it really changed the region.

[01:28:12] Yes, probably. That's for sure. Also, we had better knowledge of what was happening in the wine, even more than in the viticulture, because we now know more about viticulture also, but the first point of research was an analogy more than viticulture. I think I'm born at a very

[01:28:37] interesting period where it was possible to change things, whereas for the young generation today, they have to go for more things into details to do new things. It seems like something else that was key, and you've sort of already alluded to it,

[01:28:55] was temperature control. So, you like to kind of maintain a temperature of fermentation that doesn't go over 30 degrees Celsius. Then, as you mentioned, after that period of time,

[01:29:07] after you get it off the skins, you like to put it cold into barrel so that you don't start the mallow. If you think of driving a car, you need an accelerator and you need also a steering wheel.

[01:29:24] There is nothing like that to drive fermentation. The only way is to use the temperature control. And in the 50s or 60s, very few people could afford purchasing an equipment. There was almost no equipment to control the temperature. To produce some cold, for instance,

[01:29:48] some heat was more easy because you had a burner or something, it was easy. But to have some cold at your winery itself does not exist or very expensive. It was more easy to have that sort of equipment in the 80s. And my first investment,

[01:30:10] technical investment at the estate was to purchase a cooling machine. I had mine in 1983, which has been a demonstration of the efficiency of the temperature control, which my father did not have before. He had a system, but that was not efficient at all,

[01:30:33] not enough, let's say. And this was a very useful tool to obtain a wine that has gone through all the phases of the cuvee, the right way, and obtain a wine on which I'm sure I have a better control of

[01:30:54] the style. Because you know, after all, making a wine is in the same time infusing the grape, the grape skins, like making tea, but it's infusion of grape skin and in the same time fermenting the sugar to obtain alcohol instead, alcohol plus superior alcohol plus aldehydes and

[01:31:24] everything that comes together with that. And you have to manage the two. Also, it's thanks to the cooling equipment that we were able to proceed in several steps, thinking of a soak first, that is infusion without alcohol. So only elements that can be dissolved into water can go

[01:31:52] to the juice, but with sugar instead, which can help to extract also and to stabilize. And then you go for the fermentation on the second step. To do those two operations in two

[01:32:08] different steps, the only way is to have a control of the temperature. And then if you want eventually to delay the malolactic fermentation, again the temperature is another way to control

[01:32:21] that. And if you want to make sure also that all your sugars are totally fermented to the last grams, then you have to master the temperature of the fermentation during the fermentation itself, not go beyond the 32 centigrade for instance and etc. So yeah, this was a very useful

[01:32:42] equipment which we could afford to obtain in the 80s. Something else that seems important and you've already spoken about it a little bit is that interplay at the different stages, both as it's fermenting and then as it's aging between

[01:32:55] oxidation and reduction. If it's moving into reduction, then maybe a pump over, but keeping it on the leaves to keep it in a reductive state to avoid the oxidation, because the oxidation changes the tannins and strips color, doing less racking than maybe

[01:33:10] would have been done a generation before you, for example. So it seems like there's always this tightrope of walking the line between oxidation and reduction with the reds. Yeah, the reduction potential of wine is something that you can measure, but the indication is not

[01:33:27] very useful in fact, so nobody measures this, the oxido reduction potential. But of course, the reduction is a very strong key point to the dimension of the wine, the type of aromatics you

[01:33:44] are building up. But so far we don't master that very well, so we use what we have on our hands, so that's the leaves which are the most efficient. If you don't have the leaves because you have

[01:33:55] racked too many times, each racking you remove leaves, and if the wine is too clean and you want to keep it under control, then you have to use sulfur, because sulfur helps a lot

[01:34:07] to reduction also. And I think it's very important now to think of the effect on health also of sulfur and reduce the amount of sulfur, but you have to match that with the capacity of the wine to go through the barrel journey.

[01:34:25] And the reason that you can keep it on the leaves more in this era than maybe in a previous era is that the fruit is coming in cleaner. Yeah, the sorting table, so far the global warming has been helpful also on that, I have to admit.

[01:34:40] It's more easy today where we have drier seasons than in the 70s or 60s where it was sometimes very rainy until harvest almost. Do you think that Burgundy has been a beneficiary so far of climate change? I mean, I know there's been hail and frost but...

[01:35:01] Oh yeah, okay, of course, because these are accidents and so this will always exist. I'm pretty much sure I can bet on that. But so far, yes, the global warming has been

[01:35:12] kind of helpful just to make sure that everything is ripe when we pick, which was not the case before. But what is good to a certain point can be also destroying if you extrapolate, if you go too far on that. I'm sometimes fascinated by the off-vintages and the

[01:35:33] potential they have to age and to provide surprises in wines after a few years. And I'm afraid that sometimes too much of ripeness, it imposes style which I have not created and I don't desire sometimes. And probably too much of ripeness

[01:35:57] keeps the vintner style a little behind and the vintage replaces the man who's making the wine, which maybe for most of the wines of the planet would not change, but for Burgundy, it removes a part of what makes Burgundy so special.

[01:36:13] Yeah, I remember, obviously it's a slightly different region, but John Foyard told me, when you have a warm vintage, you also have a warm vintage ferment. It behaves differently in the winery because temperatures are different and the sugars are different.

[01:36:26] Yes. But my main concern is the fact that Burgundy is special because it's a place where through time, historically, the vineyards have been divided by donations and everything. So it's very spread around and we make wines that represent a certain style, a house style,

[01:36:50] an estate style, let's say, because the vineyards are not in the same spot. If you think of, if I were the only owner of all the Bon Mart and this was all I have,

[01:37:06] my style was Bon Mart, would be Bon Mart. And my style individual would be very little in that. But if in Bon Mart I'm in six different positions, which is the case, then of course I will use

[01:37:23] everything I get from those sections, but I can impose my style a little bit, but I have to deal with the vintage, with the climate. And if the climate offers me a very high level of ripeness, then my control on the style also disappears because

[01:37:44] then the climate takes control of the style. And that's why I'm afraid of the global warming, not for the fact that it's going to change the style of the wine. Of course, it's going to have an influence, but I'm afraid because Burgundy loses a part of its specificity

[01:38:02] to make very human-driven sorts of wines rather than climate driven. Something else that has changed a little bit from your father's era, and even from when you were first getting going, is that you're doing less crushing of fruit for red wine now, right?

[01:38:18] Oh, that's also because of the fruit that has changed a little bit. Less crushing, even none. Also because I want to ferment again, I want to have my soak first and then to have my fermentation.

[01:38:34] If I crush then I provide better conditions for the fermentation to start sooner. The yeast get in contact with the juice and they start going, and you want that to be slower.

[01:38:44] I want it to be a little delayed. Just a question of two or three days, it's enough. But something noticeable also is that we punch down much less. And punching down in Burgundy was something very common with fruits that contain little tannins. But now because we have more

[01:39:06] sunshine, the grapes contain more tannins, and so we have to reduce the number of punching down. So really what it has been is a constant dialogue with the environment, basically. It's only that. Yeah, sure.

[01:39:22] We only have a little bit of time left, but if I were to read many people, they would put you at the very pinnacle of Burgundy. You're thought of as one of the real greats. What would you like to still achieve in your career?

[01:39:35] For me, this would be like I've never tried any biodynamic things. Strange maybe, but I've never tried nothing like that. So maybe it would be to convert or try biodynamic methods. I find this very unclear and very mysterious. I need to learn a little bit of that.

[01:40:04] I'm a spoiled man because I'm born in a great region, in a family where we have these holdings. I'm spoiled and I don't want to spoil anything of that. And I have to transmit. And that's something to work on too.

[01:40:25] Christophe Roumier has known intuitively, but also through experience, that what is good can also destroy and that the human role of the winemaker is to keep the line between the two. Thank you very much for being here today.

[01:40:36] Thank you, Levi, because you are very, very helpful asking the good questions. Christophe Roumier of Domaine Georges Roumier and also Christophe Roumier in Chambon-Moussigny in Burgundy in France. All Drink to That is hosted and produced by myself, Levi Dalton. Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces.

[01:40:56] Editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey. The show music was performed and composed by Rob Moose and Thomas Bartlett. Show artwork by Alicia Tanoian. T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, and so much more, including show stickers,

[01:41:10] notebooks, and even gift wrap are available for sale if you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com. That's I-L-L drink to that P-O-D dot com, which is the same place you'd go to sign up for our email

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[01:41:39] That's super important to see every episode. And thank you for listening. Still curious about that discussion around delayed mallow that turned out to be such a key aspect of Christophe Rumier's technique when it comes to winemaking?

[01:42:09] Christophe mentioned in his interview that the ability to measure the completion of a malolactic wasn't available until the second half of the 20th century in Burgundy. Here's a clip from All Drink to That episode 249 when Michel Lafarge recalls the introduction of

[01:42:25] the technique in 1959. Michel Lafarge began vinifying wines in Burgundy in the 1940s. His interview was translated by Daniel Jonas. So one thing that was a huge factor in 59 was the year that they discovered the importance

[01:43:01] of malolactic fermentation and how to determine whether the wines had achieved malolactic fermentation. The 57 he had to reopen bottles that had been corked, put them back in a tank to complete the malolactic fermentation and then bottle them again.

[01:43:49] The enology in understanding the technical side has helped them succeed in producing wines almost every year that are good and healthy. Whereas before that understanding it was just the instincts or the savoir-faire of the vigneron somewhat left to chance.

[01:44:33] Now that you've heard Michel Lafarge, something to think about is that 1959 is a few years after the time that Christophe Rumier's father began working at the Rumier family domain in Chambault-Moussigny.

[01:44:45] He began in around 1953 and that's to say that by the time the 1980s came around there were still many people in Burgundy who had been vinifying wines before the process of malolactic was really completely understood. For example, Dominique Lafon shared with me this story about his friend Mr.

[01:45:03] Belanger. Everybody was saying oh I have long fermentation it's better for my wine blah blah and all that and you hear that everywhere. My father had a guy who was working in the cellar,

[01:45:17] Mr. Belanger, wonderful man who's known me as a kid and actually died fairly old and I kept contact with him. I used to invite him every year to taste the wine with me

[01:45:30] and one day he came and visited in the spring, March, April and all my wines were going through malolactic fermentation. I gave him to taste the wine I said oh your wines they have not finished

[01:45:47] the fermentations and I said no no no the sugar fermentation is finished no no it's not finished it's fermenting. I was like no no no but it's because it's going through malolactic fermentation fermentation but at his time nobody was checking malolactic fermentation so it's like long

[01:46:05] fermentation included sugar and malolactic without knowing what was doing what. You can also consider how Benjamin Leroux, whose career really gets going as a winemaker in Burgundy in the 1990s, how he summed up the traditional view of malolactic in episode 467

[01:46:25] of I'll Drink to That. The old growers said you know we've experienced the later is the malo the better it is for the wine which means in the past we were probably keeping the wine on

[01:46:36] fine leaves for you know nine months then you have malolactic starting in spring for a couple of weeks and then you're racking after a year and then you have only six months on fine leaves at the end

[01:46:48] of the aging. Becky Wasserman also highlighted that while the timing of malolactic may be a stylistic choice there are top wines made in really contrasting ways. And I also learned that

[01:47:01] there is no one recipe you know if you look at the way Rousseau makes wines I mean it's completely different and it would absolutely shock somebody else he likes a very comfortable

[01:47:14] quite quick malo where other people ah I'm so glad the malos haven't started and it's now three years you know all of that. And on this topic of the timing of malolactic Claude de Nicolay of Chandon

[01:47:27] de Bréhi sums up what might be a winemaking position in the middle saying that in some years her wines go one way with malo and in other years another. Do the malos happen fairly quickly?

[01:47:39] It depends on the level of acidity but usually if they are low acids like in 14 for example the malolactic happens quite right away especially if the cellar are still hot because it's helpful

[01:47:51] for the bacteria to to work. Sometimes it happens a year after like 13 was the opposite was high in acid so we even had to heat a little bit the cellar to get the bacteria the natural bacteria goes on

[01:48:05] and do their work. What are your thoughts about delayed malo and this aspect of winemaking? Let us know in a comment online. While researching questions for this interview I read the book

[01:48:18] Cote d'Or by Clive Coates and referred to the writing of Neil Martin on vinnis.com as well as write-ups on winehog.org. If you would like to know more about the wines of Domaine Georges Rumié

[01:48:30] I would recommend all of those resources to you. It is for sure that I would not have asked certain questions in this particular interview if I had not read those writings first. Also I would like

[01:48:42] to thank Robert Boer for his help in making this interview with Christophe Rumié a reality. Thank you Robert. So the Amaruse is one parcel? Yeah only one. And with Beaumar and Moussigny

[01:48:53] it's multiple parcels right? Moussigny is one piece, one parcel. No no it's okay. It's one very tiny nine meters. Of course it is I'm sorry. I don't know why I asked. Yeah I wish it was bigger of course. It's not forbidden to dream.