Domaine Guillemot-Michel, Burgundy

Hello Guys,
I’ve been mainly a silent reader here, but let me try to change that.
For the last few year I’ve been working with my wife on the family estate (Domaine Guillemot-Michel, which as been cited a couple time on the forum) and with the quarantine here I have a little more time to do what I’ve been postponing for years, one thing being refreshing and translating our website in English (website that didn’t existed just a few years ago so that’s already that…).
At the same time, I’ve been posting some info about the estate in a less “corporate” style on a French wine forum Ive been part of for many years and I thought that you might enjoy these texts.
I’ve read the FAQ/Rules, didn’t quite sure I understood everything about the BersekerBusiness and the forum policy about those ITB but If I’m trespassing here, fell free to tell me and remove this thread.
As you might have guessed, I’ not a native speaker so please forgive me for potential mistakes (and fell free to point them as I might reuse part of the texts).

First of all, the history of the Estate:

Domaine Guillemot-Michel is a 6.5 ha (16acres) family vineyard located in “Quintaine”, between the villages of Viré and Clessé, in the heart of the Viré-Clessé appellation, in southern Burgundy.

In 1982, after studying viticulture and oenology (BTS in Mâcon then DNO in Montpellier) my in-laws, Pierrette Michel and Marc Guillemot returned to help Pierrette’s sick father who could no longer manage his vines alone (an all too common story). Back then, the grapes were delivered to the local coop’ the great grandfather helped creating. After his first spraying, poisoned by the chemicals, Marc came home, puked and decided to no longer use, I quote, “these crap”. The estate went organic. Followed a few disagreements with the neighbors and especially with the cooperative, which they left in 1985, bottling their first vintage under the name “Pierrette and Marc Guillemot-Michel, Quintaine”. The “Quintaine” cuvée will remain the only cuvée produced on the estate for 30 years.

While Pierrette and Marc had to find money to buy winemaking material (tanks, etc.), the 1984 vintage was never paid by the coop which stated “sue us, you’ll get the money in 10 years” neener
Fortunately enough, educated winemakers were rare in Burgundy at that time (don’t start me with “has it changed?”) an they started consulting and carrying out wine analyses for colleagues. Marc also works for a filtration service provider and some wine was sold bulk to the “Negoce”.

Today with 4 trained winemakers here, we continue to carry out 100% of our analyses ourselves, except for one export-compulsory certified-lab

Fortunately, the estate was quickly spotted and appreciated, in France (two stars in the Hachette guide for the first vintage) and abroad (namely the US, funny story, in 1985 when the first vintage was still growing on the vines, one day, coming back from the vineyard, they found American importers business cards under their door. These guys had heard that a young couple was leaving the coop and they wanted to be first in line. I can pretty much still see that here in France, when I discover a new estate I’ve never heard of in France they are already imported in Japan, US, etc. always cracks me up.)

After a few years of organic cultivation, they were still dissatisfied with the classic “a disease, a symptom, a molecule” tryptic and were looking for something different. However, everyone they meet was trying to sell a product, or a ready made solution. They were feeling dispossessed of a more traditional peasant approach. They found what they were looking for with Biodynamics. After several meetings, notably with Alex Podolinsky and Nicolas Joly, Pierrette and Marc turned the vineyard Biodynamic during the 1991 vintage (Demeter certification from 1992 and Biodyvin since 2018). They were seduced by the holistic vision, the non-commercial approach (here is what we do, you can do it too, yourself, we don’t need you to buy anything) and convinced by the changes they saw in the vineyard and in the wines.

This is Champ-rond, the largest block of the estate, 2,7ha (6,5 acres)

Over the years, a few purchases and exchanges of vines allow ed Pierrette and Marc to regroup some blocks and go from the initial 5.5ha to the current 6.5ha divided in 7 plots. In 2012, their daughter Sophie (my wife) returned to the estate after here viticulture and winemaking studies in Montpellier. She continues the work of her parents while bringing some new things: phytotherapy in the vineyard, distillation, and the production of an ancestral method sparkling called “Une Bulle” (one bubble). In 2017, I too officially joined the team and brought my own ideas: two micro-cuvées, a Gin, and some more project for the futureI hope I’ll talk about here.

Left to right Pierrette, Sophie, Marc and myself (Gautier)

2 Likes

Hi Gautier! This post makes me nostalgic for my cancelled trip to the Mâconnais. But felicitations to the family on the 2018s, they have turned out beautifully. I found them elegant and perfumed, not as muscular as the 2017s, and I would probably drink the 2018s before the 2017s. Perhaps you could write a few lines about what makes Viré-Clessé special, and how the hamlet of Quintaine is a distinctive area within it? There may be some people reading who have tried the wines of your neighbors the Thevenet family, who have also been farming organically for a long time.

I drank my last bottle of the 1996 Quintaine about 4 years ago and it was terrific, a brilliant example of aged white Burgundy. I wish my Ramonets, Sauzets, Niellons, and Jean Pillots from that time period had aged even half as consistently and gracefully as my Guillemot-Michels, Goyards, and Thévenets.

Hi William,
Nice to see you here! Too bad you couldn’t come but I do hope to see you when we are finally free to move around. Thank you for the nice comment on the 2018’s, I fully agree that they’ll be ready before the 2017 and I just opened a bottle of Quintaine 2018 for lunch to pair with some nice goat cheese I just got from a neighbouring farm. (Incidentally I used a Zalto glass for the first time on this vintage as I thought it wouldn’t work well but it did!).
So to tell more about Viré-Clessé and Quintaine a you encourage me to:

Like the vast majority of Burgundy’s vineyard, Viré and Clessé sit on a bedrock of Jurassic limestone. But when from Chablis to Pouilly-Fuissé through Meursault the top soil is often straight up a mix of more or less clay with this limestone (don’t get me wrong here, plenty of climat and terroir differences, love other Burgundy too) things are a little different here.

Viré-Clessé vineyard is located on two parallel north/south coasts, one more recent than the other, made of Jurassic limestone and marl-limestone. More specifically if you are a geology geek, our bedrock date back to the Bathonian to Oxfordian, around -160 My. Of course, on some part we do have clay, specifically clay with chert (simply put a kind of softer flint), but in most case we have silts or clay-silts. These silts come from the degradation of the bedrock and now we have a very different terroir.

The relief around Quintaine generates a high density of summer storms (we see them arriving through « the daisy hole », a semblance of a valley between two mountains to the west of the hamlet), accelerating the decarbonation of limestones in silts. The consequences on the physiology of the vine and therefore on the wines’ style are threefold:

-the water supply during summer contributes to a better natural acidity of the wines: we often speak of grappe ripening being blocked due to excessive heat and drought, but doing so we generally consider the sugar levels, forgetting that the acid synthesis stops earlier than the sugar synthesis, hence this general idea of ​​heavy wines lacking tension in hot dry years. At the estate, as far back as I go back in our analyzes, our wines always had a natural pH between 3.10 and 3.20 (malolactic fermentation always completed).

-the low level of active limestone favour the establishment of the vine’s deep roots (different rootstock too) and modifies the structure of the wines. The active limestone is partly responsible for the (excuse my French) “mineral” structure of Burgundy’s whites. From Chablis to Pouilly via Meursault (again! Yeah, same terroir, don’t shoot.), there is a common thread: rather sharp/tart wines made with slightly underripe grappes, to which the wood barrels flesh and body (or not for many in Chablis, I don’t think I need to illustrate their the, sometimes superb, sharpness). (And if you want to make a “Grand Cru”, you add a good dose of sulfur so that it is “closed now but will be great in 10 years”, hi to my Friends in the Côte de Beaune! [whistle.gif] ). In Viré-Clessé, the grapes develop their aromas a little later during ripening (perhaps around 0,5 more potential alcohol in average, 13-13,5 for us), and the wines are naturally rich / full bodied, the extra body provided by wood (especially new) may then weigh them down and we prefer using tanks (concrete tanks here at Domaine Guillemot-Michel).

-the silts host a slightly different microbiota which takes part in the fermentation (if you don’t kill it off in the vineyard and don’t replace it in the tank by selected yeasts and bacteria…) and therefore in the aroma of our wines.


The Quintaine terroir, is historically recognized as « tête de cuvée » (top notch, future premier cru when we’ll have some… [training.gif] ) in the villages of Viré and Clessé. I remember a village elder who, during a tasting, bent over his cane, looked at our label and told me, “Quintaine … is it all Quintaine?” I nodded and he told me with a bright eye and a grin «Quintaine… that’s the good stuff ».

The hillside of Quintaine is exposed to the rising sun, very slightly to the south, it looks at the Mont Blanc. A thin flatter part that host the main road, the houses and a few vines (Raverettes) break the slope. On the top part, the vines “culminate” (writing this is painful for a guy born in the Alps I swear) at 300m, on the lower part, the landscape change to fields and pastures and cereals around 200m. Forests are both above and bellow. The region has always been dominated by mixed farming, hence the omnipresence of coops, but also a more diverse landscape that I find a little more enticing than other 100% vineyard regions.

The vineyard benefit from the influence of the Saône river which tempers the climatic excesses, both high and low, and which (in wet years) favors the appearance of noble rot. From this, a local style of semi-sweet wine emerged that is nowadays called « levrouté » (which is not technically right as levrouté is traditionally an adjective for very ripe grappes that take on a orange hue and freckles). Thevenet whom William mentioned is a champion of this style. Actually when the Viré-Clessé appellation was founded 20 years ago (it should have been created in the 30’s with Pouilly-Fuissé but the 2 coops could never find an agreement [head-bang.gif] ) it was decided that the all of Viré-Clessé would be dry wine. Jean Thevenet fought this decision but eventually lost and was out of the appellation for many years until wines with more than 3g residual got tolerated, (in the last few years totally accepted) and the levrouté sub-appellation created for sweet wines. (Incidentally we too stay under the general macon-village appellation several years after the creation of the Viré-Clessé appellation our wines being sold under the Quintaine name with the appellation on the back label that didn’t make a big difference anyway.)

I have nothing against sweet or semi-sweet wines and we even made four vintages of « grains cendrés » (noble root) wines in the 90’s. However I feel like confusing consumers with dry, semi-sweet and sweet wine under the same appellation is not necessary a smart move. I feel that Alsace suffered an still suffer from this confusion especially now that sweetness in wine is not necessarily sought after.
Anyway, this is one of the main difference between the wines at Thevenet and ours at Domaine Guillemot-Michel: we choose to always make dry wines (to the exception of 4 « grains cendrés » vintage, clearly labelled, half bottles) while Thevenet wines almost always contain residual. They also always harvest later than us (generally start when we finish) leading to a completely different style.

On wet years, when we do have noble root in the vineyard, we welcome it and just make dry wine with it. It gives lovely wines that can be reminiscent of Chenin (probably because it’s one of the rare variety that one can commonly find dry wine made from botrytised grappes, try our Quintaine 2016 if you wonder what’s that’s like). Noble root also tend to hasten the evolution of our wines (no premox, relax!): I identify 3 stages in our wines (which I find more relevant than drinking windows) 1/ The fruit/youth phase that reach is full potential around 5 yo, 2/ The white truffle/exotic phase that culminate around 10yo and 3/ The ripe/nutty/creamy phase that start around 20+yo. In the case of botrytised vintages, the white truffle and exotic notes kick in much earlier, around 3-5yo.

Ok that’s for today, I’l give a little more details about our specific blocks in my next post.
Thanks for reading,
Gautier

Thank you Mike [thankyou.gif]
I take none of the praise for the 1996 as I was in primary school back then, but I did taste this wine (amusingly around the same time you did) and I loved it.
We seldom taste old vintages as we have few bottles of each and try to keep them as much as possible, but in December 2015 we decided to open our 30 vintages to celebrate the estate’s 30 years.
It was a great experience and we planned to renew it maybe for the estate’s 35 or for our 30 years of Biodynamic cultivation. If any of you are in France then… [drinkers.gif]
Gautier

It’s great to read about you guys! I’ve had the 2015 Quintaine a few times and have a bottle of 2014 Quintaine in my cellar waiting for the perfect occasion.

Great post! That is a more detailed account of Viré-Clessé than I have read anywhere.

Yes,

Thanks for sharing!

Very exciting to read this – thank you so much.

I just want to add my two cents about how I enjoyed reading this thread. I enjoyed your description of your appellation and hope we hear more from you Gautier. I only wish I had access to your wines here in Hawaii!

[cheers.gif]

I think it could be interesting to go into a bit more detail about the sort of aromas one finds in youthful wines from the appellation, which are for me often evocative of orange blossom and musky peach. And as a related subject, perhaps a few words on “muscaté” selections of Chardonnay which are prevalent in the Mâconnais? Both heritage muscaté selections and modern clones.

Thanks for the nice comments! Mark, your usual wine dealer should be able to get our wines if you ask them as we work with a national importer/distributor but I’m not sure how it work with Hawaii! If you know a local importer, do not hesitate to hook me up!

William, I’m not sure I’m the best person to comment on the appellation typical aromas. I’m not very good for naming aromas [scratch.gif] as it’s not really my focus at tasting. I’m much more interested in texture, energy and the general dynamic of a wine. Also I won’t speak for neighbours as, unfortunately many wines of the appellation are “tainted” with very technical winemaking (selected yeast and so on [head-bang.gif] ). But let me try to give you my take on what I find in our wines and what I believe one should be able to find in a well-made, terroir-driven Viré-Clessé.

I tend to divide our wines under 4 vintages category whether we have a dry or wet, hot or cold climat this year.
dry and hot (2019, 2017, 2015) white flowers (on the honey side, like acacia) and fruits (juicy pear) / well balanced full bodied wines with a good ageing potential
dry and cold (2014, 2011) close to the above but crispier: white flowers and crunchy fruits (those little green pears) / wines with a lot of tension that need some time to open up
wet and hot (2018): peach, yellow fruits (mirabelle plum), spices / rare combination (maybe it will become more common now), full bodied wines that open rather young
wet and cold (2016, 2013) botrytis profil: exotic fruit, truffle / very seductive wines that are lovely from the start and age faster

About the Chardonnay Muscaté, this is a natural mutation of chardonnay that gives muscat flavours to Chardonnay grapes. It was mentioned by Viala and Vermorel in their 1903 book, showing that it already existed back then in several regions but was not especially sought after except in the Mâcon area. At least two clones exist: 809 (1985) and 1068 (2003) but you can find muscaté vines here and there in old massages sections depending on the winegrower tastes. The muscat flavours can be nice in young vines but are not recommended for sparkling as they tend to give bitter tastes if harvest underripe.
We do have some Chardonnay muscaté in our vines, especially some very old vines in a small part of a block under Quintaine’s chapel. These vines are much less aromatic than the commercials available clones. We’ve never tried to make wine with just these vines so I can’t say much on the exact input of these vines, what I can say is that the grapes do have a lovely muscat, floral (rose), honeyed scent to them. It is said that these aromas are short-lived and that wine made with muscaté grapes should be drunk young. I disagree with that for several reasons. First I’ve drank unbelievably good ancient Muscat from the south of France showing that Muscat aromas do age. Secondly I believe that the muscat aromas we have on old (especially massal selection) vines is not the same as the muscat aromas we have on young (especially clones) vines. Whereas the later might indeed be adapted to aromatic - selected yeast - stainless still tank - unable to age - wines, the former do add to wines complexity at any stage.
So while I don’t think that the small proportion of Chardonnay Muscaté we do have in the vineyard have a decisive impact on our wines, I do believe that they are part of a whole.

As I just spoke about clones and massal selection, I’ll take the opportunity to develop a little about our vines before I go into a little more details about our different blocks as promised. So let me tell you a few words about replacing dead vines ad our massal selection.

Every year around bud break, (end of March, beginning of April) I take two weeks to dig out the dead vines. Most do it with a tractor and an auger, I just use my arms, a shovel (a digging type one we call « louchet » around here), and a crow bar. This is a very good way to know and remember your soil (the arms don’t forget after 2 weeks trying to dig holes in limestone…).

Me and the louchet, planting ungrafted vines

The average age of the vines at domaine Guillemot-Michel is 60 years with the oldest vines planted in 1918 and the most recent planted in 1982. As with all living things, the vines have a life expectancy, and therefore each year, some kick the bucket, sometimes helped by what we call here an “excess of iron” (euphemism for the weak vines that got hit by the plow…).

Even if I remove more old vines than young vines, I commonly remove vines of all ages, from 1 year (they simply did not grow) to 100 years (and sometimes these looked super healthy letting us pondering what happened). The number of missing vines varies from year to year, sometimes for obvious reasons (drought or frost pushing the weakest vines over the edge) sometime not.

The persons who prune (Sophie and our employee Lise) can also have a decisive impact: sometimes we decide to do a little cleaning after several years trying to save moribund feet. For more clarity: we often try to revive a weak vine by leaving only a few buds and sacrificing production in hope that this « rest » year will allow it to get back on it’s feet. More generally, at pruning, we always seek to adapt the production to the vigor of the vine (more buds for a vigorous vine, less for a weaker one). I will post about our pruning technique in more details.

So, back to replacing the dead vines. The number of vines replaced varies each year but we do not know in advance how many vines we will need to replace. So we buy an average of just under 500 vines each year (the figure is not stable due to production constraints, you’ll see why). If we have too many vines, we sell them to colleagues, if we run out, we take some from the same colleagues or in the worst case scenario we wait for the next year.

We work 100% with ou own massal selection, which means that work begins 2 years before the vines’ replacement. We go in our oldest bocks, planted before the vines clones existed or which we know were planted by the grandfather or great grandfather with a massal selection and select the best looking vines (it’s a little more complex than that) and harvest some wood (taking care that these canes won’t be missing at pruning). Each year we harvest 2000-2500 “eyes” (= buds), ie 250-300 canes, which go to our Biodynamic nurseryman, Lilian Bérillion, in the south of France. At the nursery, the vines are grafted and placed in the nursery for one year . The following year we get about 450 feet depending on the losses at grafting and during the nursery year.

Sophie performing massal selection in our Raverettes block.

With a 6.5ha vineyard planted at 8,000 feet/hectare on average, this gives us a replacement rate of around 0.8%, and an average vines age of 60-65 years.

Thanks for reading,
Gautier

1 Like

fascinating insights. I’ll look for your wines.

Fascinating, Gautier
I agree with William’s view that your explanation of Vire-Clesse and Quintaine is the best I have seen.

For those interested also in saké, Gautier has written an excellent book on the subject in French - not sure if it has been translated into English though.

Thank you very much Jasper, receiving praises by both William and you… I’m humbled.
For those who have an interest in sake, yes I’ve translated the book in English, it’s readily available on a famous e-commerce platform. I had sake on my mind when Marck mentioned he is in Hawaii as “Joy of Sake” (the largest sake tasting outside of Japan) happens there. I’d love to go but Hawaii is not the most accessible place from France…

Gautier

I have been to “Joy of Sake” numerous times. Very enlightening as to the quality spectrum of sake. I will order your book Gualtier. As an aside, my wife has many Japanese restaurant clients whom we often entertain with wine themed dinners. They often bring me a bottle of sake as an omiyage (gift). I now have a sake section in my wine cellar!

If you do ever decide to make the trek to “Joy of Sake”, let me know!

Gautier, thanks so much for posting. I’ve been a longtime fan of your wines, like Mike, and met Pierrette and Marc a couple of times, I believe at the Dive Bouteille many years ago. Although the wines are scarce in my market (North Carolina) I’ve always been able to count on getting some from my friend David Lillie at Chambers St. Wines. Just this past December I tried a cuvée that was new to me, called Viré-Clessé Charleston that was superb!

Thanks for the detailed information above. I’ll have to try to schedule a visit the next time I am in the area. Salut!

Gautier, great to read your analysis of muscaté selections of Chardonnay. Of course, as you say, it’s hard to know which of many factors account for the aromatic expression of a wine, but the presence of these selections is certainly one of many things that makes the Mâconnais special. It’s also poorly understood: a lot of tasters assume that those characteristics are coming from botrytis, I think. Sometimes their reflexive response is negative, as they aren’t used to such aromas in Chardonnay, but I have really come to appreciate those qualities, as well as the more extreme “levroutée” style.

Btw, some “muscaté” selections made it to California quite a long time ago as part of the family of Wente selections. Warren Dutton planted some in the 1960s in Rued Vineyard in the Russian River. So any “Rued clone” Chardonnays from California will display some of the aromatic qualities of the Muscaté selections in the Mâconnais. Rivers-Marie just started making a Rued Chardonnay that exemplifies that.

You are pulling your punches, because selected yeasts are really the least of the problem. Chemical farming, excess yields, machine harvesting, enzymatic clarification, acid/sugar adjustments, and aggressive filtration would all be higher on my list of problems than selected yeasts.

William, I had no idea, I should try and taste some if I ever encounter a bottle of that! It’s always fun how varieties travel like Carmenere in Chili or that one time someone showed me their gewürztraminer in New Zealand and it was Savagnin rose…

Yes, yes, the list of terribles thing done to grappes is endless and they seem to find new means of torture every year. The most recent around here seems to be a kind of hormone sprayed on the vines that double the volume of the grappes. No idea what it is, pretty sure it’s not legal… I mentioned selected yeast as many use the aromatic kind that really distort the aromatic profile of a variety or appellation. In terms of general quality everything you cited and probably other stuff are a much bigger problem than neutral selected yeast.

Gautier

My local retailer introduced me to Guillemot-Michel over ten years ago. I love the wine you are producing and am so pleased to have your voice here.

Cheers,
fred