489: Sylvain Pataille and the New Old Style

[00:00:01] Ill Drink to That, where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business. I'm Levi Dalton. I'm Erin Scala. And here's our show today. Sylvain Pataille, who is the guest on today's episode,

[00:00:28] has more than a few surprises to share about the turns his life and his winemaking have taken. My life has been completely the opposite of what I thought. Pataille's domain is based in Marseillais, which is an area of Burgundy with its own particular history.

[00:00:45] And it's a history shaped in part by Marseillais' proximity to the city of Dijon, by Appalachian groupings, and by the historical presence of Domaine Clare d'Août. Clare d'Août, which no longer exists in the way that it did for half of the 20th century,

[00:01:01] was founded by Joseph Clare. Joseph grew up in Burgundy, in humble circumstances, and was originally not a winemaker. He worked in the French civil service before World War I. But the war altered the course of Joseph's life, as his grandson Bruno Clare explained to me.

[00:01:20] Bruno, who owns a winery in Marseillais today, spoke to me about the history of Marseillais in general, and about his grandfather Joseph in particular, in a conversation translated by Peter Wasserman. He would have wanted to be a winemaker, but he couldn't, and the war changed everything.

[00:01:41] Because of the war and the studies that he had done, he ended up in the artillery. So every time the regiment of which he was part got pretty much killed off, they came back to Dijon to reform. He was a non-commissioned officer at first, and then an officer,

[00:02:00] so he was billeted outside of the barracks, and he was billeted to Marseillais, right next to the Daou winery. This is where he got back into the wine world in a sense. So this happened four times where the regiment got decimated,

[00:02:32] and he came back and was billeted in the same area. And he finally met the daughter of Mr Daou, and they married, and that's the start of the story. He used to see her go to the train station and go to her nursing job.

[00:02:58] She was not a nurse at first, but as all proper young ladies of the time, you were affected to the war effort. And she worked at the Dijon hospital and took the tram every morning at the bottom of Marseillais.

[00:03:15] And he no doubt saw her there and probably approached her there at first. At the time, there was a lot of arranged marriages, especially in the viticultural areas. And in this particular case, I can really say that this is a marriage of love.

[00:03:37] So when he came back from the war, he was of course landed with nine hectares of vines that were in a really bad state because there were no longer any men or any horses to work it. He had to put everything back together again.

[00:03:52] He had a brilliant idea. A lot of the vines were planted to Gamay at that time in Marseillais, but very few Pinot Noirs. And he figured that he could make a rosé with the Pinot Noir, and that really saved the village.

[00:04:07] And so Marseillais is an appellation that is near Dijon. Yes, it's the first villages that are... What happened is that after the revolution, the ban was made to plant, or even before, to plant Gamay.

[00:04:41] And so what your grandfather did is he invented the idea of Marseillais rosé from Pinot Noir, and that happened in 1919. That's right. That happened in 1919, correct? And that became quite popular at a time of global depression. Yes, it became very popular.

[00:05:02] Then the first American to import Marseillais rosé was Shoemaker. When we got to the 60s, it was looked at pejoratively in the sense where it wasn't a serious wine. It wasn't as serious as red. And Marseillais had sort of lost the touch of making great red wines.

[00:05:44] So it was only after World War II that people started very slowly working towards making more red wines. In the 60s is where it really took off. So this is why we only got the Burgundy-level Appellation until 1965. So it took until 1965 to get just the generic Appellation.

[00:06:07] After 1965, it took until 1987 to get the village Appellation back. One of the reasons the village Appellation was so long to come is that we didn't have enough Pinot planted in the village. And since 2002, we've put in a dossier for some premier crews in Marseillais.

[00:06:28] So for a long time it was Bourgogne-Marseillais Appellation. And then in the 80s it became Marseillais AOC, now AOP. Yes, that's clear. How do you think that affected the area of Marseillais, the growers there and the other domains? So what happened in Marseillais, we'll go back to history,

[00:06:48] but Pinot took over from the 50s on. Marseillais got its Appellation in 1987 and the Pinot planting started in 1950. But it took a while for the older generation to really get with the Appellation. They weren't being offered more money for Bourgogne-Marseillais than they were for just wine from Marseillais,

[00:07:13] nor were they being offered that much money for Marseillais in 1987 when the Appellation came along. So it took a couple of generations for people to really get with the program, to really take stock of what had happened to them and use it to their advantage.

[00:07:32] He said mid-80s there was only four people left who harvested by hand in Marseillais. Now, the people that went to machines have come back from it since. They're now back to handpicking. Do you think that when it became a Marseillais by itself,

[00:07:53] outside of Bourgogne-Marseillais, that that helped with the quality of the area? Yes, it helped because people believed in the name. And I'm talking about this generation of young people. So they said, we're not going to live like our fathers tried to.

[00:08:28] Côte de Nuits-Village, which a lot of people wanted to go, they would have lost their identity. And they would have lost also the will to produce something great. And now we see true steps in quality. You have to know that the peasants, since the war of 1914,

[00:08:46] those who were born at my father's age, I think that there's no profession that has known a deeper revolution over the last hundred years than farmers. We've gone from using scythes, horse-drawn carts, ox-drawn plows, so on, all the way to, at the end of my father's life, computers.

[00:09:10] The equipment that came on and that was available, that was made available, was just phenomenal in terms of technical advances. There's a very telling number. In France, between World War I and World War II, 40% of the population were farmers. Today, 3% of the population are farmers,

[00:09:35] which means that we have had an extraordinary revolution. Your grandfather Joseph died in 1971. And I know you spent a lot of time with him in the decade, decade and a half before he died. What was he like towards the end of his life?

[00:09:51] As a personality, what was he like? I only really knew the last 10 years, since my first real memories of him were at 7 years old until 14. And my grandfather was not so much an authoritarian as the absolute patriarch.

[00:10:18] And he didn't have to say anything or raise his voice or anything. Just a glance here and a glance there, people knew there was something askew and had to fix it. He said, for example, at the dinner table,

[00:10:32] he could just look at the table and if there was something missing, sort of look at where it might have been, and then his grandmother would immediately get up from the table and go find the object and put it on the table.

[00:10:44] He's never heard him yell at anybody or use a bad word or anything, ever. That was Bruno Claire speaking about his grandfather Joseph, the wines of Marcenie and changes to farming in the last 100 years. Sylvain Pataille refers to some of these same events and changes

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[00:13:06] Sylvain Pataille of Domaine Sylvain Pataille in Marseillais on the show today. Hello sir, how are you? Hello, very well. So you're specifically in Marseillais, which is an area near Dijon, that went through some economic ups and downs around wine. The influence of Dijon has been very strong.

[00:13:22] And in this century, in this 20th century, that was very difficult for wine business because of two wars, because of the 29 crisis, because of the 50s, because of the 73 crisis, because of oil. At the end of 19th century and beginning of 20th,

[00:13:44] Marseillais was one of the best villages in Côte, because of selling wine in Dijon. Marseillais is the closest village from the big city that was an industrial city. And you know at this time, workers were drinking very much wine, 6, 7, 8 liters wine every day.

[00:14:00] And it was much easier to carry some wine with no trucks to carry wine from Marseillais that was just 5 or 6 kilometers from Dijon, than from Beaune that was 35. At this rate, the cheneaux from Marseillais were very rich, much richer than the most famous villages in the Côte.

[00:14:22] You know, in the 30s, the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Testevin has been created to try to make people drink wine from Burgundy. And they said, if we can't sell wine, we'll share it. And it was in the 30s, it's just one century ago.

[00:14:40] And you can see some pictures for advertisement, publicité, where you can see some sparkling clove-au-joud, because it was a business that was selling wine at this period, and it permitted to sell wine. Everything has so much changed. Some of the things that caught on in the Marseillais area

[00:14:58] before your arrival and during that period of economic turbulence and also a lot more wine consumption in Dijon, it grew because Dijon expanded a lot, were Gamay, Alligoté, and then Rosé from Pinot Noir, right? Yeah. And Rosé from Pinot Noir was a solution for Croisisse.

[00:15:18] It has been created in 1919, created by Bruno Clair's grandfather, who has tried to sell wine after the war. Everything was destroyed, and the business was destroyed, the shops had closed. And you know, in the 20s, in France, it was called Les Anneaux Folles.

[00:15:37] People wanted to dance, they wanted to enjoy, they wanted to drink, they wanted to forget what they had lived for five years. And this Rosé was a new style of wine. He has invented a style, a color of wine, and it was a very good idea because

[00:15:52] it has permitted to replant Pinot in Marseillais. And when you look at old books like Dr. Laval, Languilleau-Bertin, Courtepé, they are very classical books about parcels, about owners, about methods of winemaking in the 19th century.

[00:16:08] In those books, it was written in Marseillais that the wines were very good, but we can't speak about them because they were planted in 1850, 1870, because they were planted of Gamay. And this guy, he was very good in business, he was very good to sell his wine,

[00:16:23] he has been one of the first ones to sell wine in bottles, and he has understood that this Rosé could give cash flow to the demand because it would permit to sell the wine quicker. It was a funny wine, and it was very fashionable at this time.

[00:16:39] And we kept the Rosé appellation due to this because it was successful. When you were a kid, your father was friends with the Fournier family, which is also in Marseillais. Yes, my father was a very good friend with Jean. Jean was farming his wines.

[00:16:58] My father was pruning, was making all what has to be made by hand, but Jean was ploughing, was spraying, was harvesting with his team and vinifying for my father. And you and your brother Laurent both decided that you had some interest in wine and farming.

[00:17:17] Yes, as we were children, yes. Maybe because we spent very much time with our grandfather. We were farming with him for the potatoes, for the carrots, for everything. But it's lovely, you know, maybe like this you fall in love for farming, for land, for the plants.

[00:17:35] And he had some small vines and we were always with him in the vines. And the first times we have vinified were with his vines, Aligote. Because you still make Aligote today, in fact you make several of them. More than ever.

[00:17:48] When I see how much dedication you're putting into Aligote, which is sometimes a wine that other people put less attention than you into, I feel like you're almost trying to reconnect with your grandfather and father that way, because they made homemade Aligote.

[00:18:02] Yes, maybe, but there are many reasons for this. First, it has been forgotten and I think it's a so good variety that it's a mission for me to try to make understand that it's a great, great variety if we take care with the vines

[00:18:17] and if we plant it in the best terroirs. Imagine you are talking about Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. It's certainly able to be one of the best wines in the world. But in the bottom of Merceau it will never be Perriere.

[00:18:32] And in the bottom of Vaughn it will never be Romane-Quincy. And why could it be different with Aligote? Imagine in the past, on the old books, it's told that Aligote has to be planted in the gravely soils at the top of the slopes.

[00:18:46] It has to be pruned very short, in gobelets, and it has to be harvested late. Look at right now, it's planted in a plain, in strong soils, very rich soils, with long prunings, with griot pruning. So it means that the last buds will produce some very big grapes

[00:19:05] and it's often harvested quite early because when Aligotes are done it's done. And imagine, it's completely the opposite. And for Aligote I wanted to prove it can be great. Right now there are seven different Aligotes on my range

[00:19:20] with different terroirs, and I wanted to save those old wines because if they have no economic reality they will be replaced. And in the last ten years one third of the surface has disappeared. And the other situation there is that there's both

[00:19:35] clonal Aligote now, Aligote Vert, and then Aligote Doré like you use in the old vines, which is a selection of Aligote that's pre-clonal. So in a way there's really different eras for Aligote and you're bringing back the old one. Yeah, and many things have changed.

[00:19:53] Some administrations are trying to create a conservatoire Aligote to avoid to lose this genetic diversity. And it's a very good thing to plant a new vine with some old selections of Aligote from Yon, from Saint-Brie, from Marcenay, from Vaud, from Macron, from Merceau, from everywhere.

[00:20:12] And it will permit to save it, and maybe if the law can change to take some woods to go out and to replace Aligote Vert by those ones. And you know, if everybody pulls Aligote it can move very quickly, and it can maybe make disappear

[00:20:30] those very bad Aligotes that are made with too high yields with a very systematic vinification. Well, we'll get back to how you're making the Aligote today because it's really interesting, but I don't want to skip too far ahead

[00:20:43] into the story. So in your teens you went to school for viticulture and analogy, and then you ended up doing multiple years of harvest in Bordeaux. My life has been completely the opposite of what I thought. I didn't want to work in a laboratory, absolutely not.

[00:21:00] I couldn't stand to be in a room all the day. I wanted to travel by bike in Ireland, and I wanted to travel for at least 5 years all over the world, and especially in US. And the day before the exam, it was in 97,

[00:21:18] in one university in Bordeaux, I met the boss of the best laboratory in Bourne, and I asked him, as I knew he was consulting in California, I asked him some addresses. And he told me that it was too short from June to October

[00:21:33] to September for the papers, for everything, so he told me that if you want, come on in a big estate in Savigny, one of my clients, Antoine Aguillon, the guy is lovely and there are 15 hectares of Premier Cru, Grand Cru,

[00:21:48] it's a very good place, and come on for the harvest. It was 97, so I came for the harvest just to make analysis in his estate, it was boring. But 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon, and the analysis were finished.

[00:22:03] And I spent all the rest of the day with the winemaker, with Vincent Nico, and it was fascinating. And Greco, after the harvest, told me... The guy who ran the laboratory. He wanted to take me to the lab, and I stayed there for

[00:22:18] years. So I said bye, I learned, bye California, bye. And I've been in a very good laboratory in Bonn. You know, the methods are not the ones I like, so I've stopped when I've been fed up, but he gave me an incredible experience at just 22.

[00:22:38] And the amazing thing about it was that you were consulting for a range of wineries for that lab, so you were seeing a lot of different wines from different producers, who were using different kinds of wood, who were working with different vine material, who were in different parts

[00:22:52] of the Cote d'Or. You were also on the job, whether you wanted it or not, of selling those people things to help them with their wines in a technical level, and so you got to see what those things did, like additions.

[00:23:04] Yeah, sure. On the same harvest, you look at 1,000 tanks. I was consulting 65 estates. It's incredible, for a wine producer to be able to do that. And the different estates, it's incredible. From north to south, different methods.

[00:23:20] You know, you had to work with the best and the worst winemakers, and some of them wanted just to obtain 99, and the other ones just wanted to make wines that could be sold for brokers. It's very different. And you know, you share much experience with the other

[00:23:41] winologists. We are always touring with them, just for fun, to see which population, which wood, which vinification... Blind tasting with the other people in the lab. Every day. All of these wine producers were submitting these samples for analysis at the lab so they could see technically what

[00:24:03] the numbers were and make sure they were in the right parameters, and that's why you had access to all of these different samples. It's a very interesting job. We spend two thirds of our time out of the laboratory, by tasting outside, by going to appointments,

[00:24:18] to symposiums, to technical things. It's very interesting. But at the end I wanted to stop because I had in my mind a way of making wine that was much more natural than what we were making. I wanted to try to make wine with grapes.

[00:24:36] I don't want to reinvent vinification, but I wanted to use less products. And you know, when you are a winologist, you are very confident with your client, and the client is very confident with you, and there's a very good energy between us.

[00:24:55] Not all of them, but when it works, it's very good. But after bottling, you disappear. You try the wines, you follow it, you try to imagine the best for it. After bottling, it's commercial wine, and you never try it anymore.

[00:25:12] I wanted something else, I wanted to go further than this, to say, yeah, it's my wine, I did it, it's maybe not perfect, but I made the best, and you are your own consultant. I needed to go back to culture, to farming.

[00:25:29] I am always reading books about viticulture, about plant philosophy, about the soils, about biodynamic, about winemaking. And you know, I'm much more interested in soils than in winemaking, because there are not many books and not many things about natural and very classical winemaking.

[00:25:50] The most interesting books I've read were the 19th century ones. Because you're always quoting those old books, and that's why, because there's no talk about how to do what you want to do in the books you're finding that are published more recently.

[00:26:05] Something that was completely new for me, but that is fascinating, it's my way, I like it. To go to no sulfur vinification, to go to no filtration, to go to low sulfur bottlings, to go to biodynamic in the vines,

[00:26:21] try to use less copper, less sulfur in the vines, and many things like this. And I found in those methods, in those geobiology, biodynamic, plants to save plants using essential oils, it has been discovered, but it has been forgotten. Because in recent technology,

[00:26:40] I think they can't stand doing the same thing than five years ago. Because there's a business to sell machines, to sell products, and we go further and further with so much complicated methods. It's interesting because you're in an area of Burgundy where specifically in the landscape

[00:27:00] you can see the changes of the Industrial Revolution when Dijon tripled in size, and you actually can see it out your window, and then in sort of response to that, and then also what you were seeing in the wines

[00:27:15] of the whole region, you kind of went for a more pre-industrial kind of winemaking. It's a new old style. It's a way of vinification that is growing right now everywhere. But it's just the way to make wine one century ago. In the wineries, electricity has given comfort

[00:27:36] and controlling temperature just a bit permits to avoid mistakes. For example, you know, 47 is an incredible vintage, but how many 47s have made vinegar? At the opposite, 18 was the same with very high whiteness, and we have saved nearly all the wines. By analysis, by controlling temperatures

[00:28:00] to avoid them to go higher than what the yeast can afford, it's just by using the cooler for one or two days. It's nearly nothing. The thing that makes you somewhat unique is that you have a lab background, and you can read all the technical specs,

[00:28:18] but at the same time you're very interested in, say, the technology that's a combination I don't often meet. Yes, and you know the labs, they sell analysis, they sell products, they sell devices, but you are able to buy just a part of this.

[00:28:34] And for example, 18 was a very difficult vintage due to high degrees. It has been very dry, very sunny, and you know, Grenache is able to ferment 15 degrees, but Pinot Noir has never been... The yeast that are in Burgundy, you know, they're not made for this.

[00:28:55] In the area, the natural degrees are 12, 13. And I think the natural yeast in Burgundy are not very good for this. At the opposite, our bacteria are incredible. They can make malolactic at 10 degrees, they can make malolactic with incredible low pHs, and everything in the area is logical.

[00:29:16] And the bacteria are made for normal Pinot, normal Chardonnay. And if you were using them in the south of France, it would be a disaster, I'm sure of it. So while you were still at the lab in 1999, you made your first wine?

[00:29:34] Yeah, I was the king of gamay in Marseillais. I had blended all the gamays of Marseillais. It was crazy. And in 2002-2003, I sold gamay on 5 hectares per 5 of Réligiote. It was incredible. The cheapest wines in Burgundy, and it was a disaster, economic disaster

[00:29:58] because they were sold so low. I remember in New York, the first time I sold gamay, it was an incredible Pastou Grin made with 1934 wine. The wine is lovely. But we were selling it 3 euros 80. And it's completely at the opposite of what it cost.

[00:30:16] It's much more than this. But the market was this, I was just starting. And we were starting to work with Becky, who has been my first client. You knew Olivier Lamy and he introduced you to Becky? Yeah, I knew very well Olivier.

[00:30:34] We were at school together with Nicolas Rossignol, Benjamin Leroux, Pierre-Yves Collin. So you're sort of a generational group and you sometimes taste together and talk. We are very good friends. We are always talking together, we are always trying together. I always try to experiment some things

[00:30:55] before making them. For example, we have experimented for 3 years different ways of maceration with distemming, crushed, all bunch. But it's quite hard to make it during the harvest because you have to select your grapes and to make very small vinifications in small tanks

[00:31:16] and in 60 hectoliters tank you seeper in 5 different 10 hectoliters tanks. So the temperatures are much more difficult to control, the pumpings, the pressings have to be made separately. But after aging it's very interesting to compare those maceration methods, to compare corks, to compare the new technical corks

[00:31:37] versus the classical ones. You have different soil types, you have parcels that are heavy on the limestone, you have iron rich clay, and you also have sandy parcels. If you were to look at the differences in terms of both farming and how the wines taste,

[00:31:58] what would you say about the differences of soil type? It's completely different. We all try to understand the soils. When we prune, when we plow, when we fertilize. Some lands need more fertilizers, I use manure. I use less to avoid to have too strong vines

[00:32:19] because they are more clayey, they are much deeper. Everything is different on the soil. I'm trying to give to my soils right now because we don't know if climate change will be the same all the years. In Burgundy we are in the middle. When you are in Languedoc

[00:32:43] you know it will be always sunny, if it's not raining for 2 months. In Burgundy, absolutely not. If we change the culture with the canopy, it can be like this for 2018, it can be like this for 2015, it can be like this for 2003. But what about the difference between 2003

[00:33:07] that was very dry, that was incredibly hot and 2004 that was completely the opposite with so much rain. It's like black or white. Because this situation with alternating warm and cold years makes it more difficult than if it were just consistently generally warm.

[00:33:28] Yeah, it's a continental climate with many opposites. If you say in Valney it's always dry in July and August, you maybe could keep many leaves to protect the grapes and having lower densities but next year it will be maybe wet.

[00:33:46] Let's go back to the farming of different soil types. The reason I'm asking you is sometimes I wonder to myself when I have this glass of wine in my hand, am I tasting the soil type or am I tasting

[00:33:58] the way that a farmer would work this soil type? And so I guess what I'm asking you is how do people handle high limestone versus high clay parcels in general? What would make the farming different? The ability of draining of the soil.

[00:34:16] When it's stony, it's like a roof. When it's raining, water gets down very quickly. In clay, it's a bit different. For example, two great terrors, Clovis Joux and Muzini. In Clovis Joux, it's clay, it's very strong clay that when it's dry, it's compact

[00:34:34] and when it's wet, it's play-dough. It turns kind of a grey color. Yeah. When we are ploughing, the soil hasn't to be too dry and too wet. In French, it's called ressuyage. It's quite wet to avoid compaction with the tractors

[00:34:49] because if you go in play-dough, it's a disaster. But it won't be at the same time in a draining soil in the top of soil. The example of Clovis Joux and Muzini is very interesting because they're just the small world that supers them

[00:35:04] but the geology is completely different. For example, you may be waiting for three or four days more to go and plough Clovis Joux rather than Muzini. You will start by the Muzini but it needs several days to plough all the estate.

[00:35:19] So something you've mentioned to me in the past is that with limestone, you can find what you tend to refer to as verticality in the wine. You like to use that word instead of minerality, I find. And then that also with clay,

[00:35:34] you tend to get more reduction in the wine. Yeah. More strength, more noble green aromas for the whites. And I could have some other examples in Saint-Aubin with Remilly, that is limestone. You have always some exotic fruits, some mangoes, some incredible yellow fruits, salad fruits.

[00:35:54] It's made of limestone, broken limestone, like a wall in the house. And it's draining but due to those plaques of limestone it's not too dry. It's maybe less dry than the gravel soils in Gévrier or Marseillais found to all of your corns.

[00:36:11] And you know, with the plates of limestone the humidity stays on the underside. And the roots succeed to catch this humidity. They go inside and they succeed to catch this. And if you compare, you have some very light and very warm minerality in Remilly.

[00:36:29] And if you compare with Rion that is made of... there are marls like Charlemagne for example. When you try the wine, you smell strength, you smell nobility, you smell the wine. You smell the tannins and you smell this green and bitterness that is very interesting.

[00:36:47] But it's a very different style. And the whiteness with clay is often a bit later because the water quantity that is stocked is a bit higher so the wine normally suffers a bit less of dryness. And because water is cold.

[00:37:06] When you are under the rain, you are cold. And it needs energy to be evaporated in spring. So it means that there are soils that are colder for a longer time. But then also they need more aeration later.

[00:37:20] Because you have to get the moisture out, so you have to plough basically. Yeah, because it could be compact. But you know, if you have a very good viticulture way the aeration can be made naturally by worms, by the grass roots and especially for example by the frost.

[00:37:38] So something that you like to do for instance is to roll the grass in certain parcels back into the soil as opposed to cutting the grass. Burgundy soils are poor. They are very good for wine, but we couldn't cultivate many other things because the yields would be bad.

[00:37:55] And they are quite superficial. Even with clays and marls, there is not much water inside. And we can't keep grass because in summer it's too dry and there is too much competition with wine. And it's a method to use grass between the rows.

[00:38:13] But I don't think it's a good way because it uses too much nitrogen, too much water and it decreases the yields. And you know, you have to find the balance between too much and lack of vigor. When you vinify some wines from those vines

[00:38:35] they are very dense, they are very concentrated, they are very interesting because of their body. But they have no finesse because too much channing is because of green aromas, because when you plough a bit you have more very light aromas, you have more very, you know, very subtle.

[00:38:52] And it's a mistake we made in the last 15 years. For my wine, I've always tried to decrease, decrease, decrease the vigor to obtain more concentration. And I thought that with less volume I would obtain some much more expressive wines and, you know, to have more full-bodied wines

[00:39:12] and to have a very good structure in mouth. And absolutely not. I had some strong tannins, some wines that needed 10 years to be open, no fruit, just black aromas, black and bitterness. And right now I've succeeded to increase a bit the strength of the vine.

[00:39:30] And the wines are so much more expressive. But in Burgundy, usually, and it's an old method of culture, what has been efficient for 1000 years is maybe not the worst way. And like Duncity, you know, the places where we plant vines, the pruning methods, many things have...

[00:39:51] We have to find them again, you know, you have to reinvent what has been made in the past. And in Burgundy, you have to, not to destroy, but to control grass in the period when the vine is growing, because at this period it needs to grow very quickly

[00:40:09] to make strong branches, to make a big canopy that will permit to wipe the grapes at the best. From April to June, you have to control very strongly. So you have to plow a bit more. And, you know, when we plow in the vines in Burgundy,

[00:40:26] it's 5-6 cm. It's very superficial. And you control it, and the more you go, the season goes in summer, the more you try to keep more grass, to try to start a competition with vine. You know, it's hydrostreaks that will stop the growth of the vine.

[00:40:46] If it doesn't have enough water, it'll stop growing. Yeah, yeah. At the opposite, if there's no stress, they will grow, grow, grow. And, you know, it's a very important date, July the 14th. In France we always remember this date because it's an historic date.

[00:41:04] But in the middle of July, the vines are... Normally, the growth is finished. All the leaves that will grow will make, in French it's called entrecœur, they are secondary branches. They are not useful because they consume much sugar that could go to the grapes.

[00:41:23] Those would be called laterals in California. The horizontal growth. Laterals, okay. Yeah, it's this. And we have to try to stop their growth because they will use too much energy, and the canopy will be maybe too dense. And the problem, this density can be very good

[00:41:41] if the climate is like 18°C. It's a South of France climate. There's no wind, so no botrytis. But usually in Burgundy, we are very careful with botrytis. We try to obtain the best aeration of the grapes as possible. You take those out, but you want to leave others

[00:42:00] because you want to shade the grape. But you have to be careful for the year because you want shading but you don't want moisture. Yeah, and it's a difficult choice because, for example, I repeat, for 18°C because it was a very particular year.

[00:42:14] But taking off leaves in 18°C is maybe not the best way because they had maybe too much sun and we have burned some. But when you take off leaves, it's after flowering. It's in July. When you take off leaves in July,

[00:42:30] you don't know which will be the August weather. And a lot could change in that time. So I guess that leads us in well to Guillopoussar and concern with the sap flow when you prune. Yeah, it's very, very important for me. We have converted in 08'.

[00:42:47] We have started 06' by trying to understand the sap ways. The way that sap goes within the vine. And we have started very seriously Guillopoussar in 08'. And you always try to find another solution to avoid to make a big cut.

[00:43:06] But if you have to, you maybe can. But Guillopoussar is a pruning method that tries to make the cuts on the top of the stalk. And you will try by looking at the sap ways to always keep the buds under the branch. For the bottom to be safe.

[00:43:26] So this way you have many cuts on the top and the bottom tube is very good and this way the plant is very alive. Basically, you don't make cuts to the old wood, you make cuts to the new wood. And for this reason, the vine is more healthy

[00:43:39] including less susceptible to ESCA, which is a wood disease. Yes, because when you cut a branch, it dries inside. So it dries in the stalk. You know, in winter it stocks sugars to keep energy for spring. And the most the stalk is alive,

[00:44:00] the best the sugars are and the strongest it is because the sap grows very quick, very easily and it has much energy. And when you cut, it goes in the wood, it goes dry. And when you cut an old stalk,

[00:44:14] you see that there's just 10 or 20% of alive wood. It's so reball. So basically, if you do cut the old wood, you block the sap flow and if you don't cut it, then you're able to get the sap to go further into the vine. There's obviously a difference.

[00:44:29] The vines seem to be stronger and in just 10 years, we have recreated some new sap ways and it forgets the dead parts that have been made maybe 10 or 20 years ago. In terms of the wine making, you tend to prefer these days a lot of whole cluster for red.

[00:44:48] Do you also do whole cluster pressing for white? Yes. So in terms of your experiments with both white and red using whole cluster or de-stemming, what have you found? For my vine, when we speak with Paul or Peter Wasserman, they often come to try at the cellar.

[00:45:07] I think I've always preferred whole bunch or maybe crushed whole bunch. For my vine, Paul is the same. He preferred whole bunch because of bitterness, because of very complex aromas. You know, they're complex aromas with some small defaults, some small acetates, some small phenols,

[00:45:27] but that gives so much complexity to the nose. You know, it's noble, the noble green. What do you see in terms of analysis of the wine? What's the analysis when you do de-stem or whole cluster? How is it different? Less color for whole bunch.

[00:45:45] Less color but much more stable in time. It becomes a bit brown very quickly in aging in the first year, but it's brown forever. It doesn't move very much. Less alcohol because stems catch some alcohol. Higher pH because the stems give some water and some minerals.

[00:46:04] And it's curious because, you know, many, many persons vinify with analysis. I'm a very bad analogist because I never do it. I sometimes make analysis to know and because it's legally you have to. But I never look at them,

[00:46:23] but I'm always going in a wine with my glass. I'm always testing, testing, testing because the best machine to analyze is your mouth. And for 18, the values were very bad. They seemed to be very bad. But the tartaric acid in the must was very good, quite high.

[00:46:42] And it means that after malolytic fermentation with low malic acid values, the acidity of 18s are perfect. I didn't want to change anything. Many, many laboratories have made, they wanted to acidify the must with my clients, where I go to be consultant.

[00:47:03] We didn't acidify any batch, any, any, any. When the acidity is low because it's a warm vintage, for my wine, I never want to change a vintage in another one. If it's warm, if it's wet, if it's a bit acid,

[00:47:20] we have to understand how to make the greatest wine as possible but without changing the vintage. 18 is sunny, 15 is sunny, 19 is sunny. 10 is very pure, it's fresh, 13 is fresh. You have to understand in 13 how to have harvest and how to cultivate your wine to obtain some ripe fruits.

[00:47:42] Maybe it's just by 25 or 38 liters and not 50. Actually 50, it's maybe acid with no taste, a bit liquid. But it means that 50 was too much. It means that you have just looked for a money and for security and not for the highest quality as possible.

[00:48:02] So something you mentioned earlier was crushing fruits. So that's when you open the berry before you ferment it. And I wonder if we can talk about that a little bit because I know that's important to your thinking and what you're looking for. Crushing fruits has many reasons.

[00:48:18] It permits to liberate juice, especially when you are like me, when you try to vinify with no SO2. And when you vinify with no products, no SO2, no enzymes, no yeast, no... It's very interesting because it's like in the vines

[00:48:33] to understand why on which grass we want to grow. You have to understand the environment, to understand the microbiology. And vinifying with no yeast or no SO2 is very easy from... Not easy, it's very difficult but it's very easy to understand because you just have to...

[00:48:51] You have to try to avoid competition between the best Saccharomyces cerevisiae you want to ferment, the best yeast. You have to avoid the competition between them and lactic bacterias, between them and acetic bacteria, between them and wets.

[00:49:09] And the best way is to leave them work in optimum temperature, 18 degrees, 18, 20 at the beginning and the grapes come from the vine. If you use whole bunch, you know, there's no juice. There's just much air between the berries and on the skin if you don't liberate the juice,

[00:49:31] the yeast won't be able to go in the berry to transform the sugar in alcohol. So with whole cluster, if you don't break the berries and you keep them whole, then there's no juice at the bottom of the tank

[00:49:44] and it takes much longer to get the ferment started. And what you're saying is that there is a window in which you want the ferment to get started because you also have to consider that acetic, which is vinegar, will come in

[00:49:55] and you want to get the ferment started. And so this is one of the reasons that you think crushing is important is to get more juice in the bottom of the tank so the ferment will start. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct.

[00:50:07] And because we've no yeast and no SO2, you have to try to ferment very quickly to install your natural yeast to avoid contamination by some bad microorganisms that can destroy your grapes. In just 2, 3, 4 days you can have acetic attack, your grapes are good for nothing.

[00:50:25] You won't succeed to make wine. And you have to obtain quick starting for your yeast to colonize the must. If you don't crush, it can last 3, 4, 5 days and it's too long because you have to get the fermentation started.

[00:50:42] Because you leave the bad bacteria to attack before the yeast. If you use sulfur on industrial yeast, it doesn't matter because they will kill the rest. So there's 3 things there. One is that you're not inoculating with cultured yeast and so it takes longer.

[00:51:00] The other is that there wouldn't be much juice if you didn't crush so it would take much longer. And then the third is that you're not using sulfur and sulfur would knock out the bad stuff before it got in there.

[00:51:10] And so if you want to combine those 3 things, you need to crush. So it's for the microbiological aspect but for the extraction crushing is very important. It gives a very different style of wine. You know it can give some stronger wines, blacker wines, it avoids carbonic aromas.

[00:51:34] Maybe you look for them. If you look for carbonic aromas, you put CO2 on the berries and you try to keep CO2. But for my mind, I don't like it at all because it's a technical way that is always the same

[00:51:50] and you don't find the difference between the ones. You just find the technical way that is very good. The wines are very soft, it's infusion, it's not extraction. The color of the aromas go by fermenting in the must inside the berry. But it's not the classical way

[00:52:08] and it's a shame for me when we wake up terroir, when we sleep terroir, when we eat terroir in Burgundy and in many other places. It destroys the complexity for me. In the world that's fashionable now, the natural wine world, sometimes people use semi-carbonic macerations

[00:52:29] to make wine with no sulfur but you like to extract with no sulfur. And so that's why you're crushing. It's because you want that extraction. What you think a semi-carbonic maceration might do is homogenize the wines, make all the wines taste the same no matter where they're from

[00:52:46] and that's why you're avoiding that and you're doing a more classical extraction. Yes, it's more classical because we don't look for situations with CO2 and we don't close the tanks, they are open just to obtain the complexity of a whole bunch, to have the minerality of stems,

[00:53:03] the skin contact, to have the maceration, the fermentation in the berries but without all CO2. The more I try my wines with different ways, the more I lack them with a part of juice at the beginning and I think in what I'm looking for, to obtain more complexity

[00:53:22] and easier fermentations and pure fermentations with no sulfur and no yeast, I think maybe 20-30% crushed berries to give juice for the fermentation. They give juice and they give strength to the wine but not too much because 100% crushed on the experiment is too strong for me

[00:53:43] but with 20-30% crushed berries and the rest with a whole bunch, you still obtain fruit, very noble, elegant fruit of a whole bunch but the strength, the density is very serious with crushing. And then something that's very important for you is vertical pressing

[00:54:01] as opposed to using a horizontal pneumatic press. Yeah, it was an economical choice at the beginning in 2005 because I had no money to buy a pneumatic. This way I've used my grandfather's one and it was very successful. The mast was so good and so different.

[00:54:23] It was very interesting and since 2005 I've developed it more and more and more and more and I've bought new ones, new old ones and I have 5 different sizes of presses. So, after you're done pressing, there's a big cake of skins. Yes, the extraction is completely different.

[00:54:44] Pneumatics are very good presses but with the vertical, the mast or the wine has to go inside the skins and it has to make several tens of centimeters to go from the center of the cake to go out. So, it's a bit filtered

[00:55:04] and the wines are very light and they are bright, they are shining when they are finished. And with pneumatic press it's completely the opposite. It's a very good technical way to extract but there's not this circulation inside the skins. And so really it's about

[00:55:23] two things for you, the vertical press. It's not actually about the pressure, it's about the contact of the juice with the skins and it's about how that juice exits the press. Yes, because we don't know the pressure we obtain in vertical presses but it's certainly nearly the same

[00:55:40] than with pneumatic. Certainly 2 bars. But yeah, for me it's the time of extraction and the skin contact with a big cake of the skins. It's very important. The result is different. The wines are maybe a bit stronger, the yellow color for the white is maybe a bit higher

[00:56:02] because especially for me who doesn't use SO2 there's a small oxidization, noble oxidization because it's completely blown under the press and maybe due to this the color is a bit stronger. But with skin contact you extract some phenolics and some aromas from the skin

[00:56:19] that will protect the wine in the future. One of the things that's really important in your thinking is again protecting the wine because you don't want to use sulfur and so how do you go about protecting the wine from oxidation after mallow? Globally, after mallow at home

[00:56:36] means just after the fermentation because with no SO2 the mallows are finished in November. Normally they are classically done just after the sugar but it sometimes happens and sometimes quite often happens especially with very high ripeness like vintages like 18th but mallows are often done

[00:57:00] before the sugars are finished. It's a difference for white and red in terms of when mallow happens, right? Yes, because for the whites the temperature is much lower they are in the cellar in the barrels and the pH for the whites because there are no skin contact

[00:57:16] there are no maceration the pHs are much lower so the bacterias are much less aggressive because of pH. Otherwise, for example, the pHs are 320 315, 320 when they are fermenting for the reds they are 335, 340 it's much higher. It's much higher because that's a logarithmic scale

[00:57:36] so even though it's going up only 0.2 it's a big difference. Because of maceration because we harvest a bit later reds than whites because we harvest whites on pH and on freshness of taste and we harvest whites on phenolic maturity so it's maybe one week later

[00:57:56] so pHs are naturally higher and with maceration you extract minerals from stems from skins that will make pH increase. So as pH goes up, acid goes down and so the problem with a mallow before alcoholic is done with red is that you can get more volatile.

[00:58:14] It's a disaster for the reds because you are nearly sure volatile acid will relinquish very high but for the whites it's not so dangerous. Mallows often finish before sugars and sugars finish in spring and there's no problem. But then after that time one of the keys for you

[00:58:35] is that you keep a lot of leaves that you don't remove the leaves you keep it in the barrel and then you age for a while without racking sometimes you stir and that could be a year it could be 16 months. Yeah, you know

[00:58:52] they are naturally stable versus oxygen because of the leaves that are reductive because of the strength of the wine that will consume oxygen because of all the microorganisms that are still alive and who use oxygen and they will consume oxygen instead of wine and they don't need SO2

[00:59:14] for a long time for example we'll try some rosé fleur de pinot I never had sulfur before 18 months because it's stable because by testing it's very pure and you have to be confident in your wines and when you make some no SO2 wines for aging like I do

[00:59:36] the wines have some moments that are incredible they are so good and after them there are some periods where they seem to be completely oxidized for example my wines are often a bit closed and they seem to be yellow to be mudderized they could seem to be primox

[00:59:57] some dead wines in barrel from August to October and you couldn't believe they are the same wines and they are going to freshness it's incredible it means that the wine has been rebuilt differently it has been oxidized it's a second birth and to be stronger

[01:00:20] I've actually encountered that because the first time I visited your cellar was late July and the whites were crashing really hard and showing what seemed to be oxidation in barrel and so I thought well this guy doesn't know what he's doing and I went back another time

[01:00:36] at a different time of year and the whites were fresh and it showed me that you were following this cycle without trying to manipulate the cycle basically the wines go up and they come down and they go back up for white and it's really interesting to try them

[01:00:54] you just have to forget they were bad in September you hope journalists won't come sorry about that I want to bring in here the perspective of an American winemaker John Kongsgaard whose trips to Burgundy cellars in the 1980s influenced his development of the Newton unfiltered Chardonnay in California

[01:01:15] here's what John told me in episode 327 of this program the Chardonnay picture was my Chardonnay picture was very influenced by those annual visits to Burgundy in the 80s so I had this unfiltered idea which goes together with a second year of aging it's pretty hard to make

[01:01:39] unfiltered Chardonnay and bottle it in the first August but if you're liberated to leave the wine in barrel for a second year now you can start to think of it like a red wine lots of people do not filter their red wine most people filter their white wine

[01:01:55] that's partly just the time in barrel nature will clarify the wine if you give it enough time to get the wine to age to visit the great places it was Cochterie and Comte Lafon and Bonneau de Martre and the Gagnards and Ramonet and so on

[01:02:13] and what I found was that it was actually pretty shocking my first trip was in the spring and here were all the wines that were six months old or eight months old they all seemed incredibly oxidized totally knackered kind of no sulfur and they said oh no

[01:02:33] this is just what they're doing at this time of year come back after harvest and you'll see these same wines and they'll be in a different stage so I learned, I did that came back and there were these wines that I thought were goners were fresh and beautiful

[01:02:51] and had some nuance that you never can find in California wines of those days so I learned the magic of the second year of aging and the first harvest in the fall with the first racking and the end of malolactic and the first sulfur addition

[01:03:09] so there's this whole idea of letting the wine really, really die and then having its resurrection come in the second half of its life so we were really I came back from France telling Newton this Peter said wow that's pretty far fetched said let's try it

[01:03:27] we got a lot of Chardonnay here let's use our best vineyards so we did that in starting in 88 so we left the top barrels a little blend of a few hundred cases for the second year late sulfuring full malolactic racking around

[01:03:47] when the wine was a little over a year old to make the blend first sulfur at that point and this was a revelation I thought ha, there's where that nutty character of white burgundy comes from and so on John's whole interview is really worth revisiting lately

[01:04:03] John touches on a few more topics that Sylvain also discusses here and that episode of John's is number 327 but it is worth pointing out in this episode that extended aging in barrel isn't something that every white burgundy producer does and there are several examples

[01:04:21] of producers in burgundy today who don't make their wines that way what Sylvain and John do with Chardonnay is a choice that has its own implications and more depth right after the break would you like to hear more new episodes of All Drink To That?

[01:04:39] consider making a gift donation to support the program you can donate from anywhere by making use of the PayPal or Stripe links on the show website and that website is alldrinktothatpod.com that's I-L-L-drinktothat-P-O-D dot com to directly support the show look for the PayPal or Stripe insignia

[01:04:59] direct donations are the number one reason that this show continues to exist do your part today one of the things you do is give a little batonage to whites right? to protect a little bit against oxidation one or two times during sometimes it depends on the vintage

[01:05:17] because it's curious but 18 didn't need it but I sometimes steer the lees in November, December when the cellars when the temperature is going down very strongly and when temperature goes down the oxidization is stronger because you solubilize more oxygen and I sometimes steer the lees at this period

[01:05:39] just because it permits to mix between the wine that seems to be more on too much oxidized and the lees that are too much reductive because they have get compact and compaction makes them be really reductive and after steering it's perfect it gives acidity due to the

[01:06:01] crystals of tartaric acid in the lees it gives freshness oxidization has disappeared and reduction has disappeared and it's perfect usually steer one or twice in winter and sometimes once in summer when it's too hot, too warm too dry and you know in the cellars

[01:06:21] at this time in July, August the woods are often even old woods steering the lees permits to get freshness and to eject the wood it's certainly like a small fining so how do you see the role of reduction in your winemaking for both white and red wines

[01:06:43] what's the role that reduction plays? the role of reduction it's maybe a way of vinification by non-decanting when you leave sediments in the white for the reds it's a bit different I think urban vinification is stronger than using the lees when we fill the barrels

[01:07:03] they have been decanted for the reds at the opposite it's not as useful as the whites you know the lees in white wines are made of yeast a big part of the lees is made of yeast in the reds the fermentation has been finished in the tank

[01:07:21] during the maceration and the lees are made of a part of lees a part of skins some proteins something that comes from the grape and you have to be careful not to use too much of them because of bad reduction and because they can be used as food

[01:07:41] by the worst microorganisms breads for example so we decant them they are not completely clear because they make the balance between oxidization and reduction and they control wood your caramels are especially controlled by the volume of lees in whites but if you use too much you lose purity

[01:08:05] you lose freshness you lose much thing and if there is lack of lees the wines are dry and they oxidize much quicker but for the whites the reduction is a way of vinification it's a traditional way and I don't know if it permits to use less SO2

[01:08:25] but it's very efficient this very light pressing to avoid because you know decanting has been developed with the electric presses with the mechanic presses because they were crushing so much and they were so aggressive to the grapes that there were so many sediments that were bad

[01:08:49] and you were losing the fruit and you were just in bitterness in strong aromas in very bad green aromas and the problem is with a vertical press in the past nothing was decanted so when you say decanted you mean remove from the gross lees

[01:09:07] you mean take the lees out of the barrel so settle and then remove yeah, the classical in French it's called debourbage for the whites when you leave the wines in tank for 24-36 hours and you separate the must from the bulbs it wasn't in the past

[01:09:25] but with long very soft pressing so naturally to reductive aromas but maybe due too to the concentration in the wine in the white wines reduction can be due to sediments it can be due to higher temperature of fermentation and it can be due to sulfur

[01:09:45] especially in the wines when you spray against oil too much sulfur and it especially can be due to a lack of nitrogen so about grass in wines if there is too much grass the grass will consume the nitrogen and the fermentation will be bad

[01:10:04] the sugars won't be finished before winter and you can have some deviant aromas and especially some reductions so do you see reduction as one thing or as a family of things that seem very similar it's a big family of things that can be so lovely

[01:10:22] they can be called coche de riz one of the things you've told me is that when you're not using sulfur reduction can help protect the wine for white in a way that doesn't change the taste or the nose of the wine like it would if you added sulfur

[01:10:38] it will be different but you know I don't look for my wines to be reduced because I don't use acetone in my mind there's absolutely no line with... they go to reduction it's typical of limestone because it's typical of dense concentrated must because they have not been

[01:11:02] decanted at all and because the fermentation is very natural and by using some natural yeast the reduction is stronger than if you use some commercial wines because when you buy some yeast some industrial yeast everything is done to have the best fruit as possible to avoid reduction

[01:11:24] reduction is a default it's an enemy of fruit it's an enemy of fruit especially if you leave them in big big big tanks and especially if you sell the wines very quickly it's absolutely not an enemy of fruit it's the first way of complexity in Burgundy wines

[01:11:44] after 18 months of aging I heard you say something interesting there to me because sometimes I feel like I get more reduction on limestone parcels which theoretically would be the opposite but it also seems to give reduction do you find the same?

[01:12:00] yeah, and it's difficult to talk about reduction because there is no reduction there are reductions that can come from a bad yeast that can come from lack of nitrogen that can come from temperatures that can come from the yeast but the noble reduction we often smell in Burgundy

[01:12:18] is due to very good yeast and there's a very good variety of different types of yeast but the value of sediments and long fermentation no much nitrogen if you add nitrogen in the must it won't be reduced and so for me a lot of times

[01:12:36] I see your wines as working on a couple different levels all at once so there's the breadth of your wines the width of them and then there's the verticality of them which are often in a sort of tension in the way that they work together

[01:12:52] and then there's a kind of freedom because you don't sulfur until bottling a lot of people would sulfur when the grapes came in they'd sulfur depress they'd sulfur after mellow and you don't do any of that so in a way I see your wines

[01:13:08] as kind of often in flux not just in a barrel but in the bottle like when you pour it and it kind of shimmers in a way that some wines don't because these three qualities is how I would sum it up between the press, between crushing

[01:13:26] between decanting the nuts the temperatures, the yeast it's incredible to try exactly the same grapes once upon a time a long time ago we have shared grapes with friends to compare our vinification style so exactly one barrel, one barrel in grapes for some wines

[01:13:48] so just to see the difference between pressing between fermenting between natural yeast or not, between, between and the result was incredible incredible and you know maybe all those small details are details that are important the reflection is important but it's curious because at the end

[01:14:16] I think the walls, the roof the mood where it's vinified has been more important than the press not always but you can tell when someone has moved to a different cellar because the wines taste different even if they're doing the same thing maybe the yeast environment has changed

[01:14:36] for example and it was a big surprise for us to see this because we thought it would be different it's obvious because the mood, the cellar, the yeast everything is different but we couldn't think it could be so large depending on how they're different

[01:14:56] so we touched on a bunch of topics and we sort of jumped around white to red but if I were to better understand Pinot Noir versus Chardonnay versus Aligoté in terms of fermentation and maturation what should I know about those great varieties?

[01:15:14] In the wines, Chardonnay is very sensitive to Oidium Aligoté would be more sensitive to Mildew but patchless to Oidium Chardonnay is very sensitive to the same things and the same years the vintages can be impacted by Mildew or Oidium very rarely the both

[01:15:36] but for the culture it's quite easy especially with all wines Aligoté has to be controlled a bit more but I think it's very important to prune it very short just to keep the first buds on the branch because the first buds are less productive

[01:15:52] less grapes and smaller grapes like Gamay when you go in Beaujolais the Gamay are always pruned in Goblet and it's because they understood the varieties and understood it would permit to give the best Chardonnay is quite easy to cultivate except Oidium but it's quite easy

[01:16:10] it's easy to control yields the ripeness is very quick it's a variety that can be very rich in sugar the natural degrees can be very high but in Burgundy especially in Côte de Nicole de Beaune it's nearly never able to produce some sweet wines

[01:16:26] except with Macon, Vireclesay where the sweet wines of Chardonnay are very good and Pinot it's certainly the most difficult grape in Burgundy everybody knows it because it can't afford too much yield it can't afford lack of maturity it can't afford too high maturities

[01:16:45] it's maybe easier with too high maturities rather lower maturities but you always have to control the pruning lengths to control the buds to control the leaves to control everything and it's sensitive to Botrytis it's sensitive to colour it's sensitive to many things it's very funny to vinify

[01:17:07] but it's certainly for this reason it's so famous in Burgundy because it's paradise for it here it's a very good variety it's a very good variety it's so famous in Burgundy because it's paradise for it here the climate is perfect for it the soils are perfect

[01:17:24] we never ask it for too high yields it's often considered as one of the most difficult varieties but I don't agree at all so one interesting thing that kind of coincides date-wise with your career and then what was happening in Burgundy

[01:17:40] is that you were working in a lab doing analysis on a lot of wines from 97 to 2001 and that was also a key time in Burgundy for Premox on Chardonnay so when you would see analysis on white Burgundy on Chardonnay what was happening in the 90s and early 2000s

[01:17:58] and what are your thoughts about Premox in general? it's a difficult question we don't know because you know in the analysis there was nothing bad the values of SO2 were good they were still good they were still at normal values

[01:18:14] with Premox the vintners have increased quite much SO2 values as a result of that yeah, to try to avoid it doesn't avoid completely but why Premox? is it due to press? because of lack of tannins? because of lack of oxidization? pneumatic presses are maybe too soft? maybe

[01:18:40] and you know in the last 10 days many guys have changed their pressing methods 10 years? by pressing higher, by turning more to extract tannins to extract some bitterness because you know when we were using the yellow presses they were called Vasselin everybody had some presses like this

[01:19:03] we had no or nearly no Premox and is it due to aging? that could be longer or shorter but some guys who bottled early have no Premox some guys who bottled late have some and is it due to cork? that becomes bad the density of cork

[01:19:22] that gives more oxygen to the wine because you know is it due to cork? or is it cork that shows the sensibility to Premox? imagine we we stem by hand we try to make everything like jewels and the bottle is dead because of cork

[01:19:45] 3 years of work destroyed by a small cork do you de-stem by hand? sometimes yeah so then in that case what have you seen as the difference between de-stemming by hand and de-stemming with machine? it's just for fun

[01:19:59] just for fun and to be sure that it's made by hand for L'Ancestral which is your most expensive red one? I de-stem it just a bit for small batches when you look at the machines when you look at the berries that fall from the stemmers

[01:20:14] it's very difficult to be as good by hand by hand you crush some berries and it's not soft maybe crushing is good, I don't know so what about the idea of finding and filtering? what do you think about these topics in general for red and white?

[01:20:31] painting for the whites is globally it has decreased very much it's still done but just a bit with very low low low low quantities but for my wine I often use bentonite some clay to clear the wines a bit to avoid to filtrism because with no SO2 for

[01:20:53] most of my white wines we spend 15, 18, 20 months before bottling I nearly never bottle before and just the bottom of the tank is filtered especially 17s they were not clear absolutely not, they were still very trouble this way we have filtered one third in the bottom of the tank

[01:21:15] and unfiltered all the top it was like this for 17 but it can be different how do you make that determination? what are you looking for? like the pH, like the analysis with my glass you taste and you say yeah I taste the wine

[01:21:31] so one thing that I don't want to leave the interview without discussing because it's both a part of where you are and then it's a large part of your work is the different terroirs of Marseillais because it's actually three villages

[01:21:43] one of which is called Marseillais in the Appalachian and you make single Ludi wines from both Aligoté, Chardonnay and then also Pinot so could you go over in kind of more broad strokes the terroir of Marseillais? there are three ones but not especially on the villages

[01:22:01] so the three villages are Couchet, Marseillais and Chesneuve but there are three parts the first one is located between Couchet and Fissin in the south it's a quite high slope very strong limestone white limestone Comblanchien that gives very strong wines and very serious wines made to be kept

[01:22:21] especially Champerdry Champerdry are very high I think it's the highest place in Côte de Nuit with Mauray with Rue de Vergy Rue de Vergy and Champerdry are the top places and they are nearly the same size with white strong stones

[01:22:39] and they are very good for the whites there is this part of Champerdry and a Champerdry is a Champerdry the style is very clear it's a very strong identity in this place there is a second part that is between Couchet and Marseillais

[01:22:55] and half on Couchet and half on Marseillais it's the place of Jean Salomon, Clément Jou, Claude Joux, Charmaux-Praître they are very superficial soils on the stone 30 cm of land and the mother rock the elevation is a bit lower with very soft wines

[01:23:14] the wines are very elegant, very fresh never very long but very complex you know, very fine and the last part is a small way from Longeroy, Cloduroy and Chapitre where wines are much stronger, much more complex and for my mind Chapitre, Cloduroy, Longeroy, Champerdry

[01:23:35] are the top premier cruises of Marseillais and it looks like there may in a few days be premier cruises of Marseillais officially from the Appalachian they should, but we don't know when maybe 5, maybe 10 years in 1987 classification many mistakes have been done they said it was too large

[01:23:58] some bad arguments and we are asking to reclassify them so that's sort of the idea I know you are a man full of ideas and thoughts and experiments so what is really on your mind to try in the next few years? I don't know what I will change

[01:24:14] I couldn't believe 10 years before I would plow 1.5 hectares with a horse that I would stop to cut that I would cut the trees that I would cut the trees that I would cut the trees that I would cut the trees that I would cut the trees

[01:24:33] that I would stop to cut that I would use biodynamics that I would vinify with no sulfur but it's clear for me that the evolution of my estate will go in this sense to try to make the most ecological viticulture as possible and in my dreams

[01:24:52] I'd like to develop horse plowing it could be possible in my mind to build a stable and to buy 5 horses if the result in Clemangeau is better than Tractor much better than Tractor I'm able to Sylvain Petit is interested in the evolution of techniques

[01:25:14] that can last a thousand years thank you very much for being here today Sylvain Petit of Domaine Sylvain Petit in Marseillais in Burgundy All Drinks of That is hosted and produced by myself, Levi Dalton Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey

[01:25:34] 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, notebooks and even gif wrap are available for sale if you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com

[01:25:54] that's I-L-L drinktothat P-O-D dot com which is the same place you'd go to sign up for our email list of all the crucially important donations that help keep this show operating you can donate from anywhere using PayPal or Stripe on the show website remember to hit subscribe

[01:26:12] or to follow this show in your favorite podcast app please that's super important to see every episode and thank you for listening this episode came together with a lot of help from the Wasserman family particularly Peter Wasserman who translated for Bryn O'Clair and Becky Wasserman

[01:26:45] who is a woman of a certain age and was born in 1923 I recorded with Becky back in 2017 and this is what she told me about aging windows and the wines of Marie Saint-Denis now will people keep the Roche and the Saint-Denis long enough and alright

[01:27:04] what is long enough now it depends on how you like your wine as well it is said and I ought to be able to speak about this be younger. I'm not sure that applies to me particularly, but I can see one always has

[01:27:26] the thought, I'm not going to be here in 10 years. So shall I, shall I not? You know, will I put this down? I have a tendency to buy, Maurice Saint-Denis, either very good

[01:27:36] village old vines or a premier cru that I know is going to be more ready to drink earlier, that is for sure. But if you give me a lovely old Claude Laroche, I will not turn it away.

[01:27:52] You can hear more from Becky Wasserman about her life, her career and her friendships in episode 430 of this program. My thanks to her and may she rest in peace. So let's move on to hedging or trimming. You're experimenting more recently with not hedging,

[01:28:09] which is not cutting the top of the vine off. And the alternative to hedging would be folding, so bringing it down or tying it. And so you're experimenting in certain parcels with keeping the top of the vine growth and what have you seen as a result?

[01:28:26] I haven't really compared the difference yet because we have started with 17, but there was a mistake in the winery and they have blended the two parts of the parcel for Ligauté. Twenny has made a mistake, it doesn't matter. It was Vivaldi-Gauthier-Chamourpret. He has blended

[01:28:42] the two tanks of this parcel in the same tank. I hate that guy. Yeah. So we forget 17, the wine is great, but the experiment is down.