For this 59th episode of the Wine Makers Show, your wine podcast, we headed off to meet Vincent Avenel at Domaine Chanson. The least we can say is that we were warmly welcomed and had plenty to talk about. With Vincent, we discussed his journey, his first encounter with wine, the different regions where he worked. Then, of course, we talked about Burgundy and Chanson. Through tasting and stories, we had a blast. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it.
Antoine: Hello Vincent. Vincent: Hello Antoine. Antoine: Thank you so much for welcoming us here. We’re at Domaine Chanson Père et Fils, right in the middle of Beaune. We’re really happy to be with you this lunchtime. As we were saying earlier, this is the second time we’ve been to Burgundy, that we’ve spent some time here, and it’s really a pleasure to discover this magnificent region a little more.
We’re going to talk about lots of things since you have a varied career and you also do plenty of things here at Domaine Chanson with all the teams, we have many topics to cover but first, can you start by introducing yourself?
Vincent: First off, I want to say I’m delighted to welcome you, with Marine today. So introducing myself, my name is Vincent Avenel, I’m 50, married, three kids, that’s a bit anecdotal compared to wine. As I mentioned, I arrived in Burgundy 20 years ago. I started in the wine world 25 years ago. I’m not from a winemaking or merchant family or anything like that. No particular ties with the wine world. I fell into it by chance, I’d say, and by love, since when I was a student I followed my wife who was studying in Bordeaux. My ambition was to work in the export of high-value French products. I had an attraction, more of a pull toward luxury products. Not bling-bling luxury. Value-added luxury, the know-how that makes a difference, the attention to detail. I aspired to promote that kind of French product around the world. That was a bit of my student journey too. I’d done business school with quite a few exchanges to Germany and England. So there it is, exporting luxury goods. I joined the woman who would later become my wife, in Bordeaux. And what sells in Bordeaux for export? Ah, wine! For me at the time, wine was not at all part of my daily life and I didn’t even have a particular attraction to it, to be very honest. Wine was my father opening a bottle on Saturday or Sunday. And I’d see him swirling his wine glass and I’d think: “He’s losing it!”, because I didn’t understand the point or pleasure it could bring. And in fact, like Obelix, I fell into it and I loved it. I found my first job with a Bordeaux négociant called Barrière Frères and there I discovered this world, of crus classés, châteaux, crus bourgeois, small châteaux, primeurs sales. It was a great experience and I really discovered a universe that fascinated me, and I told myself I never wanted to change sectors again. Maybe regions, but no longer sectors. I was like a fish in water in this sector. I did three years in Bordeaux, where I was responsible for export zones. I handled European countries on the commercial side, and my wife, again, I followed her for love. She found a job in the Loire Valley, so we ended up in Ancenis where I still worked in wine, but in a very different universe, a cooperative this time, so it’s different in terms of structure and mindset I’d say, compared to a négociant.
There it was Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie, Crémants de Loire, Coteaux-du-Layon, Coteaux d’Ancenis Gamay. Very different wines, by their style, but also by their market, their commercialization, their price level. It was a very different experience. I stayed there two years. A very enriching experience because not in the world, well less in the world in any case of high-value wines, but on the other hand excellent value for money, wines with lots of diversity, too. I really enjoyed it but I was still missing the luxury side, I have to say. After two years, after following my wife several times, I told her: “Okay, now you’re going to follow me.” I didn’t want to go back to Bordeaux, because I’d already done it. I’d really enjoyed it but I was curious. I wanted to see other regions. I’d thought: “There’s the Rhône, Burgundy, and Champagne.” Those were roughly the three targets I had. It was Burgundy. I arrived 20 years ago in Burgundy. I started working at Bouchard Père et Fils, William Fèvre, Champagne Henriot. I cite the three names because they’re actually part of the same family group, the Henriot group. When I joined them, I had the three brands to promote in my zone. I came from my Muscadet cooperative to Beaune. I have to say I was quite impressed. When you arrive at the Château de Beaune, it’s the headquarters of Bouchard Père et Fils. I was 30, a young salesperson still learning the trade. When you’re welcomed by Mr. Joseph Henriot himself, who shows you around the château, the bastion and the whole thing, you think: “Wow!” I’d even said a phrase to him that shocked him, because he was rather old-school French. After the visit I’d told him: “Wow, it’s Disneyland!” That shocked him because for him it wasn’t a positive reference. But for me, it meant I was amazed. I was like a child discovering a fairy-tale universe. Great wines, châteaux, cellars, it was fabulous. I worked there six years. Great experience, great boss, great colleagues, I really learned a lot. I really fell in love with Burgundy and the concept of terroir. It was perhaps put forward a little less in the previous regions, whereas here truly, you know, the climats, the climats, the climats. And I loved this philosophy, which gives a very authentic approach. We have one grape variety, one place, one year. You can’t make a blend. It’s the pure expression of a year, of a place, with a fruit. There it is, I love this spirit which is a spirit of purity, of authenticity. After six years at Bouchard Père et Fils, William Fèvre, Champagne Henriot, I had the opportunity to join Faiveley which is also a very fine domaine, very fine house in Burgundy, where I became export director, global commercial director worldwide. As they had the good idea to buy a domaine in Chablis called Billaud-Simon, I had the chance and honor to look after two very fine brands, two very fine domaines, so Faiveley and Billaud-Simon. I’m maybe being a bit long but it is quite a journey. After nine years at Faiveley Billaud-Simon, I had the opportunity to take another step in my career and take on a general management role. That was also my career goal because I love talking about wine, selling it… I’m a businessman, that’s not a dirty word. I love doing business, but it’s true that when you’re in commerce and have such a product, you’re necessarily fascinated by the upstream side too. It’s very attractive to take an interest in what happens in the vineyard, what’s going to make qualitative differences, how it’s vinified, how it’s aged. If you can touch a little on all these aspects, you have access to everything. And so you have a 360-degree experience, it’s fabulous. So that was my goal. To do it, general management is a good position. It was possible at Chanson and I joined in 2016. For nine months I was commercial director, it was a bit of the transition phase with my predecessor who was going to retire. I took over from him. Since 2017 I’ve been running Chanson, with great pleasure.
What’s interesting in your story is that you came into wine by chance. It wasn’t on purpose for you to start working in wine.
Vincent: No, I was passionate about cars. One of the sectors I also wanted to work in when I was looking for a job, when I came out of business school, was the automobile industry. I’d actually done a lot of internships at Renault, at Fiat, in Britain, in Germany. Now, it’s a hobby and another hobby ended up becoming a job.
That’s what’s funny. What made you stay in Bordeaux in wine? Did you have a click moment? Did you tell yourself: “Actually this is incredible,” or did you slowly slide into it?
Vincent: It was really a very quick click because I have a great aptitude for pleasure.
Which isn’t bad.
Vincent: No, but I specify because if I think of one of the drivers in my career, in my professional journey, it’s that I love eating well, I love drinking good wines, I love beautiful gardens, beautiful parks, I love beautiful cars, beautiful clothes. I have a great capacity to see or feel pleasure with things like that. And wine brought me that hedonistic side. On top of that, what’s extraordinary is that it’s a pleasure beyond just consumption. There’s truly a sensory, cultural, historical side. It’s not just pleasure and consumption. There’s a whole universe around it, and a whole universe in which you also meet people who have abilities or characteristics for sharing their passion, their commitment. I realized, this is great, not only is wine a super interesting product, in France we have a recognition for being specialists in the field, and it brings me a lot of pleasure. I love working, but if it’s just to suffer it’s not very interesting. If it’s just to make money, no, that doesn’t particularly interest me, but if on top of that there’s this dimension of sensory pleasure, I find it great.
Yes, that’s clear. I’m pretty aligned with that.
Vincent: It’s pretty easy to align with that.
What do you take away from these experiences in Bordeaux and the Loire and try to import or apply in Burgundy?
Vincent: Bordeaux is the strength of the brand and ultimately a certain ease of approach. I often say that when you start with great wines, you start with Bordeaux. Because at the same time it’s, how to put it, you can’t deny it, it’s truly a prestigious region. But also, it’s not as complicated as that to understand, unlike Burgundy for example. One of Bordeaux’s strengths is being both exclusive through its luxury side, price positioning, quality, while ultimately being very approachable for, I’d say, the average Joe who wants to take an interest in wine. It’s true that with, somehow, the flaws this can imply, because it’s very tied ultimately, this ease, to scoring. At the time anyway, when I started, it was the 94, 95, 96, 97 vintages, it was full Parkerization. So, you can criticize. That said, you don’t have to read it, you don’t have to follow it. The one to criticize is rather the one who reads it, not the one who writes it. He does his job. He tastes wines, he writes, he scores. It’s true that it gave a guideline, a fairly simple instruction manual. Even if it wasn’t always very fair, first, second, third, fourth, it gives a structure. You have a château, there are vines around, it’s not complicated. If you compare to Burgundy where each producer has 10, 15, 20, 40 different parcels with always a little something different, well. Understanding Bordeaux is very good. They also have a great thing, well that I practiced a lot at the time, which was the en primeur release which is ultimately a commercial act but beyond that it’s an event. At the time anyway, because I no longer work in Bordeaux, I see this from a distance. But I think it’s still the case. It’s an event that excites wine lovers, wine buyers. We know there’s a date. It sparks curiosity and covetousness in the good sense of the word. And it makes you want to know, am I taking some, am I not buying any, how much, and the prices that evolve. At the time, there was also that speculative side which has an exciting character since these are deals. That’s a strength of Bordeaux, it’s how they’ve managed to commercialize their wines worldwide. Nevertheless with downsides, that is, I remember when I was there, there wasn’t really any building of recurring distribution. It was, I remember at the time, well I’d passed that stage a bit, but it was the American market that had woken up in the early 90s. Then there was Hong Kong that suddenly woke up and was buying like crazy. Then I didn’t experience it but I imagine there was China. It’s basically a kind of scorched earth. You feed a market because suddenly it becomes fashionable in that place. Others ultimately you neglect them and you go from one field to another. But it has an end because and what, once you’ve done all the markets. It’s true that it was something I liked a little less in Bordeaux’s commercialization, that there was, I find, less notion of loyalty in building distribution and supplier-customer relationships. Now, I love clients too. I love wines but I want to have relationships, not just say: “How many will you take and if you don’t take them I’ll sell them to someone else.” What I want is to have lasting relationships with my distributors, my importers, and build something solid. I felt I didn’t have that in Bordeaux. Even me, since one day I sold Grand-Puy-Lacoste, the next day I sold Beychevelle, then Lagrange, then Ducru-Beaucaillou, and I’d say to myself: “Actually you sell all the wines for which you’re given an allocation, but where’s your real personal commitment? What’s your flag?” I was ultimately more an intermediary, not sufficiently committed upstream, in any case being in négoce. I felt frustration. When I arrived at the cooperative, it was the same. In the cooperative, there are the cooperators who bring their grapes, we vinify them, age them, and commercialize them. There, you see the whole journey too. So when you work for a cooperative, at the time it was called “Les Vignerons de la Noëlle”, now it’s been absorbed into a larger Loire Valley cooperative, but there I told myself I was defending a company, a brand, a team, a spirit, a stance, cooperators who produce grapes and bring them to us, and so on. There was a commitment for me that was stronger because the wines, this time, were our babies. We brought them into the world, it was great. On the other hand, the demand side, as you can have in Bordeaux, was much less there. They’re really wines you have to sell, bring to amateurs, to consumers. There was much more arduous work from a promotion and building point of view. That’s where I realized I had an aptitude for it, for convincing if I’m convinced, for transmitting the message. I told myself if I succeed at that, and on top I have wines that are even higher-end, luxury and so on, I’ll manage to combine, in any case to be in a hyper favorable context for me, for my personal satisfaction and potentially for my career development. That’s why I’d spotted Champagne, the Rhône, rather Northern Rhône, and Burgundy because I told myself in these regions there are brands, families, or domaines. If you work for them you defend a flag, a coat of arms, a name. On top they’re already in the luxury universe, so it combines everything. I had the possibility, by the way, to go to Champagne or Burgundy. I knew absolutely nothing. I knew Bordeaux and the Loire Valley, but Burgundy, I knew absolutely nothing. I had a few interviews and I told myself it was going to be hard to sell myself if I knew nothing, so I opened a book.
That’s a good idea. I did the same at the start of this podcast. I told myself it was going to be hard to do interviews if I knew nothing.
Vincent: I was on my TGV between Angers and Dijon. I take my book and open it and close it after five minutes saying it’s complicated and that it’s not in five minutes I’ll be able to absorb anything, it won’t even be a veneer, it’ll be nothing. I even told myself, but who can understand this? It impressed me and frankly. It’s scary at first. I did my interviews and then I realized that ultimately if you’re interested and passionate, if you want to… For sure, you won’t instantly know everything but once again the goal isn’t to know everything. The goal is to want to understand, discover, get into the subject. That’s what happened to me, I learned, as they say, “on the job”, and it went rather well.
Precisely, that was a question I wanted to ask you, originally you weren’t made for wine, but you had to learn all this, to taste, etc. How did you do it? On the job? Through tasting, through visits?
Vincent: Practice. Learning wine, because I see more and more people who want to get certified, take classes etc., which is a good thing, it’s not criticizable. But once again, it’s sensory. Some people can learn a wine dictionary by heart, if they don’t have the sensitivity, they’ll never feel. They might be wells of knowledge, you give them a name, they can say that this guy has five hectares here, makes so many bottles, has so much aging in new oak etc., but that’s only information. It’s not perception, emotion. Wine, I say sensation or pleasure, but there’s even an emotional aspect in wine. That’s what I perceived I had and that I had the capacity to share with other people. And being a beginner, that is to say arriving fresh in a region, allowed me to put myself in the place of many people I’d meet later in my career who arrive and don’t know, want to be guided. As I myself was in a position of not knowing, I think it developed in me a pedagogical capacity to address them. Not in “knowing” mode, I don’t have that approach at all, but rather in “sharing” mode. “Come, let’s discover together, you’ll taste, and what’s important is what you feel, not what I’ll say you should feel.” And that, I think, is an approach I’ve always had for 20 years in Burgundy and which has, I think, pleased many of the people I’ve met.
You told us a bit about your first steps in Burgundy, so something apparently quite fairy-like, quite incredible…
Vincent: Not the tasting.
Then go ahead, precisely.
Vincent: Because when I was in Ancenis, at the time I bought quite a bit of Bordeaux and Loire Valley wines. I had an excellent wine merchant in Ancenis, I don’t know if he still exists. He was called Bournigault, it was an Ali Baba’s cave, that place. So I sensed I was going to head toward Burgundy and so I’d gone to see Mr. Bournigault and told him: “Mr. Bournigault, I know nothing about Burgundy. I’d like to buy a few bottles to taste, to know.” He’d sold me a few bottles, I won’t give the names, they’re competitors, but my first impression, I was super disappointed. Because coming precisely from Bordeaux, the profile is so different, it’s totally another reading grid in fact. At first, I told myself there’s no color, no density, there’s even acidity. All of these are criteria that are, not deal-breakers when talking about Bordeaux, but well, yes, somewhat. I told myself that either Mr. Bournigault sold me junk, or I don’t have the sensitivity. And that’s what I often say, Burgundy is rarely love at first sight. There’s a notion of maturity, of coming back, of understanding. It’s not “punch in your face” precisely, they’re wines you have to, I don’t know if it’s the right term, but you have to enter, concentrate, practice. I’m not particularly into art, but I imagine someone who loves a painting, every time they look at it, if they’re passionate they’ll see something else again. As if there were several layers, several reading levels. I think it’s the same for a piece of music, or a film. You see it for the first time, you’ve seen the story overall, but if you love the film you want to see it again. You see more details and really enter the film, the story or the piece of music. And wine, and Burgundy wine, it’s that. It doesn’t give everything, all at once, it’s not obvious, it’s not for, how to say, the uninitiated at first. It’s something that requires a bit of practice, interest, and even, I’d say, willingness. It’s not a consumer product, where it has to be immediately good and understandable, no. It’s, I’d say wine, like the person who’ll drink it, you need a harmony there too, a balance between them for the magic to happen.
Yes, that’s clear and we were saying earlier, but you rarely start by tasting Burgundy wines when you take an interest in wine. Also because there’s all this aspect of understanding we talked about earlier, you mentioned, which is hard to grasp, but I agree with you that you need to come back to it and really take an interest.
Vincent: All the more so, sorry to cut you off, allow me to add that it’s perhaps less the case today but 20 years ago, buying Burgundy wines was a minefield. Because I think there was much more heterogeneity in terms of quality. We didn’t have the same climate either as today, so there weren’t always very successful or very ripe years. It’s scary because sometimes you tell yourself you put down a certain sum and it’s not worth it. I think that’s no longer the case today in Burgundy, well you can still encounter disappointments, but at the time it was really night and day.
How does your arrival here, at Domaine Chanson, happen?
Vincent: Well, first, why did I leave Faiveley? I’d done nine years at Faiveley, I’d reached the highest position I could reach at Faiveley. The only position remaining was direction but there it was Erwan Faiveley and Eve Faiveley. So that was harder. If I wanted to continue my rise, I had to go look for my opportunity elsewhere. At that time Chanson, which belongs to the Bollinger family group, the management of the Bollinger family group knew that my predecessor Gilles de Courcel was going to retire and that this transition needed to be prepared. It was Gilles who crossed paths with me at a Vinexpo and we talked. I think I, as they say, caught his eye. The group called me and said: “We’re looking for Gilles de Courcel’s successor, are you interested?” I said: “Of course, I’m interested.” They proposed a small transition phase, nine, twelve months. I arrived and discovered Chanson. I wasn’t, how to say, surprised, because I’d already done Bouchard Père et Fils 1750, 120 hectares, cellars in the Château de Beaune. I’d done Faiveley, 1825 if my memory is good, 120 hectares, cellars in Nuits-Saint-Georges. I arrive at Chanson, 43 hectares, a 15th-century bastion, cellars… Ultimately companies that have many similarities. They were founded around the same time when there was precisely the rise of Burgundy. It’s all these houses, all these names, like Drouhin, Bouchard, Jadot etc., that made Burgundy shine throughout the world in the 18th, early 19th century. For me, nothing very different except that this time I was the boss. Which makes a big difference, with that positive side, that is, I can take an interest in all subjects, with that more difficult side, that is, I have all the responsibilities. When you’re the general manager, you’re also a bit the receptacle for problems. You have to solve them. It’s very demanding. And then you go from one subject to another constantly all day long. As a beginner, because I was still a beginner, it’s very demanding. But I wanted it, so I got it and you have to take it on.
You have to take it on, yes that’s true.
Vincent: And in fact the graft took relatively easily. On the other hand, what was very different was the stylistic level of the wines. Because certainly, there are terroirs you can compare. There were Beaune, Beaune Cru at Faiveley, Beaune at Bouchard, I sold lots too. Here, there are also Beaune Premier Cru, but then you see that depending on cultivation methods, yields, vinification method, choice of coopers, aging, you can arrive at a different result. Because in fact in terroir people always think about the soil, the hill, the exposure but in the concept of terroir, there’s the impact of the human too. There’s no such thing as a wine that makes itself. There’s a lot of work, of micro decisions taken, and this succession of micro decisions in the end makes a difference that’s not micro, that’s mega. When I arrived here, there was indeed a vinification style that was quite different from what I’d known in the past, we’ll come back to it during the tasting. So it was a very good discovery.
Then precisely, the transition is perfect.
Vincent: Ah, I’ve been doing radio my whole life!
Almost! We’re facing six small samples. I propose we start this tasting together.
Vincent: We said small samples because they’re small bottles, but they’re great wines. I selected, as we said, in Burgundy, we as a house, a domaine like Chanson, we have around 60 references. The goal isn’t to taste 60 wines, in any case no one or few people have the ability to taste 60 wines at once. Plus there’s no notion of pleasure, when it’s too much. I made a selection of three whites and three reds. They’re in small bottles, actually they’re half bottles because they’re wines, as they say, drawn from barrel, so we took them mid-aging because it’s the 2020 vintage. It’s the vintage we’re going to start offering since at Chanson we’ve developed quite a method of releasing wines, well I don’t like to say like the Bordelais, but a bit early. That is, we sell part of our vintage before it’s been bottled, en primeur.
We were told about Burgundy Week which takes place in London.
Vincent: In London, that’s it, which is a major event, super exciting too, in January, generally the first half of January, where precisely these 2020s will be presented. We present them a little in advance for all our British partners so they themselves have made their selection and so they select the wines they’ll present during these tastings. We don’t limit ourselves to Britain, we offer to buy wines en primeur to all our markets, in France, in the United States. We sell worldwide. It’s the topical subject currently, it’s what we present a lot. They’re wines that aren’t finished obviously since they’ll be bottled between November and March or April next year.
They’ll surely also stay a bit in bottle before being tasted by the consumer.
Vincent: That’s true but what happens is people drink wines earlier and earlier. Same, I’m not making a value judgment, everyone does what they want, but I do observe that this is accelerating. And it’s accelerating from a pure availability standpoint too. In Burgundy, harvests, with a few exceptions, are small. In 2021 we have another illustration. It’s funny because I started in 2016, in April. There was the frost of April 27. I remember it well because it was my birthday, big frost, we made a half harvest. And 2021 is what we experienced this year, same punishment, half harvest too. In Burgundy, the quantities put on the market are low. Demand is incredible. Antoine: And growing, on top. Vincent: Incredible, it’s the still wine category that’s the most dynamic in France and abroad. We’re benefiting fully from this dynamic, I’d say, we’re underperforming Burgundy by far currently. So there’s less wine, there’s lots of demand. There’s necessarily demand that accelerates, whether people want it or not, they drink wines younger and younger.
Interesting to have this perspective.
Vincent: I also think wines are increasingly drinkable and pleasant young. There are in my opinion two things explaining this: the will of the owner, the winemaker, the director to make wines that are seductive because we’ve also understood that people don’t want to wait 20 years before tasting wines. We try to give them a profile that’s more expressive and a texture that’s more approachable when they’re young, if we can, if the vintage allows it. And then warm vintages favor a style of wines that are drinkable and pleasant younger. The tannins for reds are rounder, riper, so you have a silkier texture. There’s generally less acidity because heat destroys acidity in the grape, so you have wines that are more pleasant on that level, a little less hard. And then they’re very expressive, so right away, in their youth, wow, there’s a wow effect, which we’ll have by the way with the 2020 vintage.
Off we go. What are you presenting first? A Pernand-Vergelesses.
Vincent: Yes, a Pernand-Vergelesses, premier cru, En Caradeux, 2020 vintage. For those who’ve already been to Burgundy, we’re in this valley that leads to the village of Pernand-Vergelesses, and when you head toward Pernand-Vergelesses it’s a slope located on the left and which is right opposite the Corton Charlemagne. Vincent: Ah yes, that’s for the whites this one, because we have a glass for whites, a glass for reds. Antoine: Thank you very much. Vincent: With exceptional wines you need exceptional glasses.
You need exceptional glasses, yes.
Vincent: I mention it because oddly it’s not a very French culture. Antoine: That’s true. Vincent: And it’s nonsense. You can’t taste wine well in unsuitable glasses. So, yes, it’s perhaps a bit costly, you need several because depending on the wines you need different shapes, types, but it’s really worth it because having a great wine and ruining it in an unsuitable glass, it’s really a shame.
Yes, that’s clear, I really agree on this. There are two big brands of wine glasses which are Zalto and Riedel. Obviously, there are plenty of others. I think if you look, there are plenty of others, but it’s worth it. It’s worth 10 or 20 euros per glass per unit, but clearly it makes the difference in a tasting. There’s no problem.
Vincent: Precisely there, for the reds, as you saw it’s a Zalto, and then for whites on the other hand it’s a Lehmann. I’d tested several types and I found this worked well too.
We’re going to taste live. In this podcast it’s a new section. This is the fourth episode where we taste during the podcast.
Vincent: Live. Antoine: Which is pretty fun, I think. Vincent: Talking while tasting is going to be.
There are little tasting noises.
Vincent: 2020 vintage, just to give some information about this vintage and so, it’ll characterize it a bit. It’s a vintage marked by the mildness of the climate, the heat even. There was a particularly mild winter, so it was one of the most precocious vintages from a vegetation, growth standpoint. By the way, we started harvest on August 24. Just to put it in perspective, it’s becoming pretty classic now to harvest at the very beginning of September or end of August, but normally, well classically, historically we were still at mid-September harvests. September 15 was classic, and that’s what we had this year by the way, harvests in mid-September. There you have it, lots of solar vintages, and 2020 is part of that, harvests generally start at end of August. It’s also a vintage characterized by some cold precisely, some humidity during the flowering period, that’s not great, as they say. Because this means we lose a bit of yield. It also generates some millerandage, that is, small grapes. It has a negative impact on volume. But on the other hand a positive impact on quality because it tends to concentrate since we have a bit less juice. So we have a better juice/skin ratio. Now aromas, structure, tannins etc., color, are in the skin, not the juice. So in the end it gives wines that have, as you can understand, a very nice ripeness, that are rather opulent, that are generous in aromatic expression. We’re on notes that evoke more yellow-flesh fruits, a bit peach, a bit apricot, something that evokes generosity and solar character. The challenge in those cases, in those vintages, is to maintain at least a sensation of freshness. Because what is a great wine? And there, it’s not Burgundy, it’s everywhere. The great wine isn’t the wine that’s ripe, it’s not the wine that’s powerful, structured, it’s not the wine that’s a fruit bomb. It’s a wine that combines an incredible number of elements: fruit, oak, acidity, tannin, texture, length on the palate, the side that’s even sometimes saline, iodized, etc. In fact, it’s when you have a harmony of many elements where you don’t tell yourself: “Ah, there’s this,” no, you tell yourself: “Ah damn, there’s this, and that, and that…” All of this lives together and when you have that, and for a young wine it’s harder because precisely time has to do its work too, but when you have that sensation of fullness, of harmony of all the elements, then in general, I get a goosebumps effect. And when I describe it, it comes because then, you tell yourself it’s complete. I don’t even need to ask myself is it strawberry, is it peppery, is it whatever. No, then it’s just, it gives me a physical, emotional, sensational sensation. And there it is, that’s what we’re looking for. And in these warm vintages we know we’ll have expression, ripeness, we know it’ll be hyper seductive but what we want to keep is the balance. It’s that sensation of freshness while preserving acidity, perhaps putting less new oak, not doing bâtonnage, doing slightly shorter agings, or perhaps not 100% in barrel. We can finish aging in tank. There are plenty of techniques that allow to preserve precisely this balance to arrive at the optimum.
Very successful. Right off the bat we have precisely what you said, a little fruit bomb. It’s ultra generous at first but we keep a nice acid backbone behind. It makes us salivate well and it’s ultra pleasant to drink. The mouthfeel is already super pleasant. We feel a lot of energy too in this mouthfeel, but it’s because it’s 2020, so it’s still…
Vincent: And we feel on the finish this side, that I often use as a term when I’m with Americans, it’s mouth watering. That is, there’s that side as if there were salt but there’s no salt, that makes you salivate. And that’s not a sensation we really focus on because often people, it’s normal it doesn’t matter, focus on the first impression. It’ll be the color, the aromas, and the first impression on the palate. But often, many people who drink wine ignore or don’t focus enough on what happens after swallowing or spitting, because we spit during tasting. Antoine: And obviously, alcohol abuse is dangerous to health, to be consumed in moderation. Vincent: Very good, that’s done. And yet, that’s precisely what differentiates exceptional wines from wines I’d say “normal.” It’s what happens after. Why? Because that’s what allows, in my opinion, the thing that allows this fusion between what we eat and what we drink. If there’s not this continuity, both tactile and aromatic in the mouth, we eat and then we drink, but there’s no fusion, whereas, when we have wines like that, with this slightly saline side that makes you salivate, salivate a bit, and then aromatic persistence, the same phenomenon happens that happens in the film Ratatouille for those who’ve seen it, when he explains, when he takes a strawberry and a piece of cheese it makes alchemy. The cartoon perfectly illustrates this thing happening in the brain. There are two elements that meet and combine.
You’re the second person to talk to us about Ratatouille. I don’t remember who was first, I think it was at Clos des Epeneaux, yesterday, so we’re going to have to watch it because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.
Vincent: This film is great, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, my children have grown up now. There’s another passage I love in Ratatouille. It’s when he eats something and it’s like a time machine, he goes back in the past and it brings him to a memory of his grandmother. Wine has this faculty, it’s a superpower. There’s little, I think there’s perhaps music that can have this effect. You hear a piece that takes you back to a memory with sweet nostalgia, and wine is the same. When you’ve experienced great emotion at a super important moment, I don’t know, a birth or you get married, or you declare your love etc., well if you had a very good wine at that moment, it’s strange but it enters your memory. There are few things that, in my opinion, can form a kind of marker in your memory. Not all wines, but this wine has that ability. Antoine: Yes, I agree. Vincent: You remember the wine you bought and tasted for a birth or a great moment with a friend, a grandiose wine, it’s printed in your head. And what’s fabulous is that when you go to taste another wine later that may have a similar characteristic, it’ll evoke that. I find it fabulous.
Yes, it’s ultra fascinating. And sometimes you spend really good moments tasting wine and it’s the wine that enters your memory, a particular emotion. It’s true often it’s accompanied, with friends or family.
Vincent: Yes. Just as the glass is important, the company is very important too.
That’s clear, sharing good wine with friends.
Vincent: Yes, especially wine alone, my god, it’s sad. You can, but it’s better to share. Now we move to the second white. I forgot to give some info because I was focused on the vintage. I also need to tell you that here we’re tasting exclusively wines that come from our own domaine. We have two activities like many producers in Burgundy. We started with a domaine and grape or wine purchases to vinify them, age them. So we have at home both wines that come from 43 hectares and wines that come from contracts we have with viticulteurs, winemakers from whom we buy either grapes. Sometimes it’s us who go harvest them, or musts, before fermentation. They’re delivered to our cellar, or wines that are mid-aging. We buy them, have them delivered to us. We finish aging and bottle them. Today, I wanted what most embodies the house, the domaine because actually it’s always a bit ambiguous for companies like Chanson. We have two images. Sometimes unfortunately it creates confusion and often to our detriment. People think maison is less good than domaine, that’s silly. It explains itself in history because there were perhaps sometimes some issues. But here, these are only wines that come from our own vines. We’re lucky to have generations because Chanson was created in 1750. We have several generations that succeeded each other, that enlarged the domaine to bring it to 43 hectares today, exclusively in Côte de Beaune, just next to us. Our parcels go from the Corton mountain down to Santenay in the south. The Caradeux, which we had first, is a parcel where we own two hectares. Then this Chassagne premier cru Les Chenevottes is also a parcel where we have a little less than two hectares, 1.8 hectares. It’s a super well situated premier cru of Chassagne since it’s at the northern limit of Chassagne. The northern limit of Chassagne is what borders the grand cru Montrachet. In Chassagne, there are two premiers crus right next to Montrachet, you can’t be closer to Montrachet than that, the premier cru Blanchot and the premier cru Chenevottes. I don’t know if you noticed but the Caradeux, I situated it taking Corton Chassagne as a reference since we’re right opposite. Here Chenevottes I situated also right next to Montrachet because there’s no fooling ourselves, there are wines that become out of price in Burgundy but it’s not because some wines become out of price that you can’t enjoy yourself. Very sincerely, you don’t need to pay fortunes sometimes to enjoy yourself. That’s why I like to situate these wines because I think every wine geek, what they like isn’t necessarily the hyper-known thing that everyone, if they have money, can buy etc., even if it’s certainly exceptional. I think the geek and I’m addressing, actually it’s even rather my target, the wine geek wants to find the thing that’s a bit off the beaten path, but that is a smart buy. That is, well, a grand cru Montrachet, at several thousand euros a bottle, no, I can’t, and is it really necessary, but I’d love the thing that’s well situated and that as a result stays at a reasonable price and for which I’ll have a lot of pleasure. Well, the Caradeux, it’s right next to the Corton Charlemagne, not opposite, and the Chenevottes is right next to Montrachet. Everyone has well understood this can be interesting.
And it’s the same, this one is super interesting. We keep this acid note and this persistence at the same time, but on the palate it has a touch of softness which is, I find it really remarkable, and it smells. Chassagne Montrachet too on the nose.
Vincent: It’s true that you have more this sensation that’s not very elegant but that we qualify as “fat.” The Caradeux, the previous one, is a colder terroir. It’s in the valley, it has east exposure so it’s a fresher terroir. We felt the more mineral, more “sharp” side as the Anglo-Saxons say. It’s strange, I sometimes use English words because I can’t find the equivalent of the concept in French or it sounds less good. It doesn’t matter, everyone will understand.
It’s chiseled, I think.
Vincent: There you go, very good. Oh, thank you. So the Caradeux, more chiseled, with a bit more tension, more minerality. The Chenevottes is more on the slightly fatter side, a bit more density, a bit more unctuous, but without being pasty and without being sticky. That’s super important too because there’s a lot of wine, in the Chardonnay category, because there I’m aiming wide, that are certainly very ripe and very opulent etc., but when you drink them, after a glass you can’t take it anymore because it’s sticky on the palate, it’s alcoholic. Alcoholic, that makes me bounce because it’s a vintage that’s pretty high in alcohol degrees and as you can see we don’t have any sensation of alcohol, of burn, because sometimes it gives this sensation and here not at all. It’s the work of defining the right harvest date, it’s super important. It’s one of the hardest decisions to take and that conditions a lot of things for the rest, and then it’s the technical team that knows how to vinify and age the wine well precisely to not have these sides of heaviness in the wine. There I think it’s a very good example.
We were talking about it a bit but the acidity that comes behind precisely allows to keep purity, freshness in the tasting. It allows not to have this sensation of alcohol or of full mouth that we can have.
Vincent: Should we also talk a little about the oak, perhaps? We’re not fans of putting tons of new wood in our wines. We still put a little because it adds complexity. It’s a little, I like to make analogies with for example, makeup. Makeup isn’t there to hide, good makeup is there to sublimate. There’s a natural beauty. The goal isn’t to disguise it or modify it. The goal is to amplify something that was naturally beautiful. And the art of aging I think that’s it, in any case it’s just my little perception. In fact you can do anything. You can put new wood, different toasts, you can go too far. And the goal precisely in wine is never to go too far.
It’s a question of balance.
Vincent: Exactly, knowing when to stop. What proportion is right, what duration is right, what type of toast is right. I won’t give all our little secrets because we want to keep our know-how and our touch, which evolves by the way because we’re not frozen in time. With Lucie and Justine, who are my managers at vineyard and cellar level, we don’t think we have absolute knowledge and we think it’s eternal progress. There needs to be eternal questioning, which isn’t easy. We do moderate aging in terms of new oak. We use between 20 and 30% new oak, no more. The goal is to bring a slight touch, a bit of that hazelnut, almond side, a slightly toasted side, but there it is, no more. Antoine: There’s an element in what you say, I think it resonates a lot in the wine world, it’s this ability not to go too far. I find that’s an element that must be super hard when you run a domaine or when you make wine even in general, that actually the opportunity to make wine you have it once a year. So you have the opportunity once to harvest and once to press, to vinify.
I think it must be super hard psychologically to say such a date is the right one to harvest and we won’t try to push one more day because maybe the next day will be even better. The fact of having to stop, I think I’d struggle with that, of not being able to say it’s good, let’s go.
Vincent: It’s because it’s not a science. There’s a lot of science and technique but actually there’s a lot of empiricism too. It depends on people and teams, but also an aptitude or a capacity to take risks or not. Then, you can be wrong. You shouldn’t be wrong too much but it’s wine. It’s nature. I mean we try to master but we don’t master much really. You have to be honest. We do our best. We shouldn’t make big mistakes. But in any case, personally, I have no certainty. Maybe a bit of conviction, but no certainty. I find on the other hand that, sometimes when you hear some who deliver truths, then everyone does as they wish, but I try to cultivate a humble approach. It’s perhaps also because I don’t have a scientific oenologist background. In the end, my judge of peace is my pure impression, my feeling. It’s very personal, I can be wrong about it. Anyway we say to be wrong, but is there a truth? Should a wine be like this and not like that? No. People are different. A wine has to find the one who’ll appreciate it. I always try to tell myself the notion of pleasure above all. I’m not there, nor my technical team, we’re not there to give ourselves pleasure on technique, we’re there to try to transmit something that comes from nature and to do it as best as possible so that it gives pleasure to someone who’ll taste it. If we manage to do this job, we’ve fulfilled the mission.
It’s a success, totally agree on that. You’re taking us to Clos des Mouches?
Vincent: Ah, you said you’d interviewed Bichot in the recent past? Antoine: In the very recent past. Actually we have a pretty funny story with Albéric Bichot. I was supposed to interview him about a year ago. Vincent: A very nice guy. Antoine: He’s super nice. We were having lunch at Château-Gris, we lost track of time and didn’t have time to do the interview. And we tasted a lot. Vincent: You have to say he’s very loquacious.
That’s why we did the interview before lunch, because otherwise we forget, and the second time I saw him we almost did the same. We went to the restaurant at noon, we came out at 4:30 PM and we almost didn’t do the interview. But we didn’t talk much about Clos des Mouches with him.
Vincent: I bounce on this because Clos des Mouches, well, you told me earlier you’d met Albéric. Indeed, Bichot is also owner of Clos des Mouches. It’s one of the best premiers crus of the Beaune appellation.
It’s a jewel.
Vincent: Which exists both in white and red. There we’re on the southern part of the Beaune appellation, on the border with Pommard, on a slope with a very marked gradient, fairly stony soil, and more on the upper part than the lower where there’s a bit more clay. In white, it’s considered a grand cru, well it’s a premier cru. For historical reasons it wasn’t classified as grand cru at the time when it was possible, but if there had to be a grand cru, in any case in white in Beaune, it would be the Clos des Mouches. I included Clos des Mouches because it’s one of our best white wines. And many people have heard of this climat but they rarely associate it with either Bichot or Chanson. They associate it with, very good colleague by the way that I appreciate a lot, the maison Drouhin, Joseph Drouhin in Beaune. For the very good and simple reason that on a climat that must be about twenty hectares, they own fourteen. They’re the majority. We see them perhaps more often, because they make a bit more. But indeed, there’s also Chanson which is owner. We have the chance to have four hectares, which isn’t negligible, with half being Chardonnay, so two hectares, and two hectares of Pinot Noir. Like the grands crus you could find a bit further south on Puligny notably like the Chevalier-Montrachet, there are indeed I find pretty similar characters. Both a side, there we’re on slightly fruity notes, there’s a slightly pineapple side, a sometimes also tarte tatin side, like a slight caramelization of fruit but with at the same time a lot of minerality. That slightly smoked, flint side that emerges. A wine that has many facets and there, obviously, super young, so we’re still on aromas I’d say, primary. But with sumptuous aging potential and development.
I think it’s the third time I’ve had the chance to taste Clos des Mouches. The first time at Chanson. Every time I find it’s an incredible slap. It’s really impressive. You were talking about wines that are complete, that have a balance of flavor, of texture, I find it really fits in.
Vincent: You feel it has an extra amplitude on the palate. It’s bigger in the mouth than the two predecessors. Amusingly too, in fact, it’s a kind of combination of the two. It has both a lot of breadth and richness but with the more tense and mineral side of the Caradeux too. It’s the crescendo side when you taste wines. There’s no entry-level here, but you start with an entry-level. Yes, there’s nice fruit, it’s nice, it’s whatever. Then bam you move to a higher degree. That one has this characteristic and you move to a yet higher degree. Sometimes in my travels or my presentations I meet people skeptical about Burgundy “Your terroir concept thing.” Then everyone has the right to think what they want, but I tell them: “You know, if it lasted so long, since as we said it was, this terroir side is still the monks, the Benedictines, the Cistercians who a thousand years ago started telling themselves that when fruit comes from this parcel the result is a bit different. We need to take an interest in this characteristic. I think there’s no dodgy concept that can last a thousand years, it’s not possible.” And then when you taste, you find that, it’s not arithmetic, it’s not A+B=C, but nevertheless, yes, there are terroirs that have a different exposure and that don’t only have different tastes. They have a different texture, a different balance. It’s a reality. And it’s hard to explain because, when people say: “Yes but why?” It’s the type of soil, what is in the soil? Actually we never finish because anyway we can’t say exactly that it’s because there there’s 10% limestone compared to here where there’s more clay. Actually, it’s a multitude of parameters. I don’t want to be too long but all this is geology. It’s actually the côte, since it’s called the côte. Here it was all flat, 140 million years ago. There was a movement, an earthquake, a tectonic accident, and a whole part of this plateau fell 500 or 600 meters lower. So it revealed different soil layers. Then there are rivers that cut this côte into hills, through erosion, they dug. And then the wind shaped these hills to round them. So we have east, southwest, south expositions, etc., and the winds follow the valleys. All this creates a multitude of possible combinations. That’s what really makes the beauty. Well, I find the most extraordinary thing in Burgundy is that you can spend your whole life drinking Burgundy without ever getting bored. Sometimes people ask the question: “If you had to take one region, you can only drink one thing the rest of your life.” Necessarily, I’d say Chanson, it’s a bit biased, but even not, no, I say it really objectively. There’s everything in Burgundy, there are whites, reds, delicate, powerful, tense, more unctuous. The palette is absolutely crazy. I think that’s why wine lovers all end up with Burgundy and really enter this region. There are sometimes regions where you can arrive with a feeling of: “Yes, I’ve already seen this.” In Burgundy, no. There’s a less positive side with that, that’s, as much as it’s capable of the greatest emotions, as much as it’s also in Burgundy that you can have the greatest disappointments. Not necessarily because of quality, terroir, or vintage, because it’s a very capricious wine in its evolution in bottle. Often, when we illustrate the aging of a wine in bottle we draw an ascending curve like this, then a plateau, then a decrease. In Burgundy, you have to draw a sine wave. The wine, throughout its life, will have periods where it’ll sing, it’ll be extraordinary, and then it’ll close down for one, two, three, four years, it depends. Then it’ll come back, transformed, well in a new phase, with a new expression. That makes Burgundy not only complex in its diversity, but also to find the right spot, drink the right wine, of the right vintage, it’s also a bit of a challenge. But same, that’s what makes the pleasure. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to find.
Exactly, opening a bottle is always a moment that’s pretty magical. I love the moment when you open a bottle and you pour yourself a tiny bit to taste. I find this moment is pretty magical because you didn’t know what to expect and so you have a kind of internal pressure that’s gripping. You take the first drops.
Vincent: The anguish. Antoine: And when it’s good, it gives pleasure. You’re reassured because you tell yourself that the bottle that was in the wine cellar wasn’t useless, my buddies, my guests will be happy. It’s always a moment that’s incredible. Vincent: Burgundy has this great ability to be able to generate both frustration and phenomenal ecstasy. We’re going to change glasses to move to reds. We take the big Zalto which are fabulous, those glasses are like magnifying glasses. They sublimate the wine. I don’t work for Zalto.
But we hug them, if they want to sponsor this podcast or do prerolls, we’ll be at your service.
Vincent: They just have a slightly annoying side that you have to be careful when handling and cleaning them because necessarily, they’re fragile. There we go on a Pernand-Vergelesses premier cru “Les Vergelesses”. It’s a parcel again from our domaine that’s a bit over five hectares. We’re really on the part at the foot of the Corton mountain. Same, we’re right next to the Corton grand cru, at the foot. So we’re more on a terroir, since we’re at the foot, on a clay terroir since we’re more in the lower part of the slope. And clay and Pinot Noir, what it gives is that it’s often very round, very ripe, very concentrated wines that have perhaps a little less complexity than when there’s more limestone but that as a result have more intensity and power. It’s really a very generous, concentrated wine, with structure, density. In a vintage like 2020 it’s remarkable. All the more so as I may not have said it before but in 2020, there were heat waves, hydric stress, so a lack of water. Even though the vine is a Mediterranean plant, it has its limits. And when it’s 40, 42 degrees and it doesn’t rain, it suffers too. So it’s good to be on a clay soil in those cases because it retains more water and so the plant suffers less. That said the vine has to suffer. I don’t know if our listeners know it. It’s not maso or sado, it’s that every plant, every fruit tree produces a good fruit if it suffers a little, well a better fruit. Why? Because the fruit actually, is the offspring. If the plant is a bit stressed, it will do everything so that its fruit, which is potentially the seed that will continue the species, can be born in the best possible conditions. So if there’s a bit of “struggle for life,” we have better fruit. Antoine: That’s funny. Vincent: It’s the survival reflex.
It’s like the saying. A plant, if you want it to be pretty you have to let it stress a little, you shouldn’t give it water all the time.
Vincent: If you give it lots of water, in any case for the vine, it’ll make foliage. It’ll develop, it’ll be fine, it’ll tell itself: “No risk, I’m developing.” Whereas if there’s a bit of stress, it tells itself it has to make beautiful fruit to be sure the species can endure.
This Pernand-Vergelesses, it’s a fruit bomb, acidic, very generous.
Vincent: Very dark, there’s also a slightly dark chocolate side, a bit of toast too, very typical in this wine.
It’s very generous, very unctuous.
Vincent: It’s often a wine, when I have someone who doesn’t really know Burgundy, who tells me: “I like the whites in Burgundy but for the reds, I struggle a bit because it lacks a bit of substance, density, structure. I stay rather on Bordeaux or Rhône.” I tell him: “Wait, I’m going to have you taste something, you’ll see.” Because it’s the same, there’s no archetype of Burgundy wine. A Burgundy wine can be for a red super delicate, silky, light, aerial as they say, a bit in delicate lines. But it can also be a wine with a lot of structure, power, and concentration.
Very good, and it makes you want to drink more. This one you want to…
Vincent: That’s the goal of the operation, with moderation.
With moderation, obviously, always. If you’re at this hour eleven of listening to the podcast.
Vincent: Already! Antoine: Time goes fast. Time goes fast in good company. Vincent: I’m chatty. Antoine: No, but it’s made for that. Vincent: Wine is for that too.
We’re here for that. If you’re still here after this hour eleven, what I always say is that a priori you consume in moderation and that wine interests you, so I’m not very worried.
Vincent: I hope the speech isn’t too soporific. Antoine: I don’t think so. I think we’ll see. Vincent: They’re not drinking, them! They’re not tasting. Antoine: It’s true they’re not tasting, but pause, go to your wine merchant. Vincent: Go right away to the very good wine merchants of France and Navarre.
All the very good wine merchants have Domaine Chanson and taste while listening. So there you’re taking us back to Beaune, premier cru.
Vincent: That’s it, Beaune is the cradle of Chanson. It’s in the city of Beaune that we are and that Chanson was founded in 1750. Plus, we’re in a magnificent place. We’re in a, how to say, a very beautiful bourgeois house that was built in 1900 and right next to this very beautiful bourgeois house, there’s a large defense tower that was part of the defense system around Beaune, called a bastion. It’s a 15th-century tower with seven-meter-thick walls in which, in this bastion, we age these wines. This bastion serves as our aging cellar. Beaune is very important for Chanson. It’s the city where the company was founded and it’s also the most important appellation in our domaine since we own 25 hectares of Beaune premier cru on 10 different climats. We’re not the largest owner of Beaune premier cru. We may not have the largest palette of Beaune premier cru but it is, I may not make friends, but it is the most, I don’t want to ruffle some of my colleagues but we have the most beautiful collection of exceptional Beaune premiers crus. If we take old Laval guides or all these old classifications that were done at one time we see that very often, at the time grand cru, premier cru didn’t exist, they called it tête de cuvée or cuvée exceptionnelle. What systematically came out was Clos des Fèves, Bressande, Grèves, and Clos des Mouches. At Chanson we have everything I just mentioned and on top we don’t have 10 ares or 20 ares. We have four hectares of Clos des Fèves, two hectares of Grèves, four hectares of Clos des Mouches. We’re really spoiled in this appellation since we have, well I’ll say it, the most beautiful collection of Beaune premier cru. Antoine: There it is, it’s said. If you don’t agree with that, intervene in this podcast. Vincent: I greet my friends at Bouchard Père et Fils, and Jadot who also have very nice parcels.
It’s a delight this one, this Beaune premier cru, Grèves 2020, incredible.
Vincent: Absolutely, it’s a balance, a silky side, fabulous. We’re on cherry notes, very ripe cherry. There’s really a very gourmand side. You want to bite into it, to crunch it, and it’s still a bit young. The tannins still need to soften a bit. But we’re in elegance, in the combination of power and finesse at the same time. An image that’s often used, same when I go to the United States, often people tell me that a Bordeaux is like a quarterback and a Burgundy is like a ballet dancer. It’s a bit schematic but it’s not bad. That is, we understand well that both are very muscular, very strong, but that one plays in the punch, it’s a bit how to say, massive, raw, and the other is at the same time powerful but stays very elegant. He can do jumps, lift his partner, etc. It’s a beautiful image that I don’t personally use but that I often hear when I’m in the United States. A bit, not caricatured but vulgarized in the good sense of the word for the different approaches we can have to wine.
I’ll steal this analogy from you for all my next tastings.
Vincent: I realize, because I also pay attention to what I said too at the start, that’s the pedagogical side. As I said wine, and Burgundy wine especially, has a mythical, mysterious character that needs to be preserved. We can’t explain everything. I myself, I haven’t understood everything, yet it’s been 20 years. I’m delighted not to have understood everything because, if I’d understood everything, I’d be bored, that’s not the goal. But it’s not because it’s mythical and complex that it should be, how to say, unapproachable and inaccessible. The goal of wine is sharing good things, conviviality. I come back to what I was saying, in my approach to explain Burgundy, Chanson, etc., I don’t want to be academic. Anyway I couldn’t be. It’s not my style. I love being pedagogical. You have to find analogies so people, with their own keys, can find their journey in this region. There as a result we make fans, they’ll have a lot of pleasure and want to discover. Antoine: Especially discover more and more. It’s also a bit of a journey of initiation, I think when you want to discover a region as complex as Burgundy and even wine in general. Anyway it’s a journey where you start by tasting A then B and that brings you to C. Then you’re told you’ll be able to understand such type of wine, your palate is a bit better trained. And I think it must even be possible to do it at Chanson to discover all of Burgundy. Well all of Burgundy, a large part of Burgundy in any case, since you have this multitude of presences. We saw it earlier on whites and we see it too on reds. Between the Pernand-Vergelesses and the Beaune premier cru we just tasted, it’s not at all the same. Vincent: Exactly. That’s our pride. It’s really to sublimate the individual as coming from a very specific terroir and to preserve this personality. Obviously we have our touch, our know-how. Yes, I haven’t mentioned it much for the reds, but we have a vinification technique that differentiates us from many colleagues. By the way you told me you went to Pacalet? Antoine: Yes. Vincent: I think he uses that too. It’s the use of whole bunch for the fermentation of red wines. Which is a, well all wines before the Second World War were made this way, so all those who have the chance to drink Romanée-Conti 1947 I think it’s 100% whole bunch. It’s a technique that had somewhat disappeared after the Second World War and until recently and that’s coming back quite a bit for ten years. I also think because it’s a notion of climate change, that there are teams that vinify wines and look after the vine that try to find solutions to develop freshness in wines. The use of whole bunch allows to develop notes that evoke more freshness, floral sides, slightly spiced sides that it can bring, and then the stem, I won’t use the word rafle, it’s not very nice but it’s still the name, also brings tannin-type elements. If we have nice ripeness it gives texture and structure to the wine. We’ve done in the past 100% whole bunch. We’re a bit more moderate now. By the way in this vintage, it’s not 100% whole bunch. The share, or proportion can vary from one vintage to another and also from one parcel to another because for some wines, it’s suitable but for others less so. Here in this case this one we destemmed a bit. There’s still a large majority of whole bunch, around 60 or 70%. Here it’s the Clos des Fèves which is our most known wine, the most iconic, it’s a monopole. Monopole means no one else has this climat. It’s been a monopole since 1968. It wasn’t at the start but the generations bought little by little all the parcels to make a monopole. So Clos des Fèves is also one of the most renowned premiers crus in Beaune like Grèves, by the way. However with a different style from Grèves. This one is more on power. It has a more structured side, more black fruit. We also find slightly more mocha, licorice notes too that are pretty typical of this terroir. Lots of breadth, of power. We concentrate.
There’s a silence that goes with these tastings that’s formidable. It’s a jewel. We were talking about emotions earlier on some tastings, but when you have this in your mouth, and it’s all the more impressive that it’s taken from tank, well from barrel.
Vincent: From barrel, this morning or yesterday afternoon.
It’s all the more impressive that it’s not finished, it’s still young. Even if it were finished, it would still be super young.
Vincent: Yes, it’s already very promising. I’m not worried about the 2020 vintage. Already 2019 sold like hot cakes. That’s one of the reasons why we set up this slightly early sale that some could call primeur. It’s not for price or speculation reasons. There isn’t huge speculation on our wines. We have to be realistic. But it’s especially because if you want some, you shouldn’t wait too long. I give this humble advice to all those who want to buy 2020s. It’s a very good vintage and it’s a very small harvest, again. Don’t delay too much.
The message has been received. If you want some in your cellar, watch the timeline. Don’t get caught out. You can prepare year-end celebrations a few years in advance, have them in your cellar and bring them out at the right time.
Vincent: It’s very right what you say because that makes me bounce too on buying by three or by six. So we’ll say I’m pushing consumption, but because just like seeing your children grow up is extraordinary to see a wine evolve. Tasting it young, then with five, ten, fifteen years, same it’ll have the same effect of memorial marker and memory because we’ll tell ourselves that this wine, I tasted it with Antoine, in 2020. And when you come back in ten years… Antoine: With pleasure. Vincent: Will I still be here? Yes, I’ll still be here. Antoine: Precisely, don’t go away. Vincent: Four more years. Yes, I remember the first time I’d tasted Chanson it was a 2020 Clos des Fèves and now that I taste it after 10 years, it’s phenomenal. That’s super memories, super emotions. Antoine: You see, I find that’s something, sometimes we talk about it and I find that’s really something we’re starting to do. Currently, we have a small wine cellar. We live in Paris so we don’t have a huge surface. Vincent: Not yet, but it’ll come. Antoine: It’ll come, soon, I hope. You see, we have a small cellar, we store a bit of wine and we were talking about it yesterday, but actually the part of the wine cellar that’s for later went from almost nothing two years ago and now there are more and more bottles where I tell myself, no, not right now, this one I really want to wait. Either they’re really young vintages, or I really want to consume them at the right moment. Vincent: That they develop, yes. Antoine: And especially I don’t have, there are few wines for which I have several copies in stock. Actually I tell myself, and I’m addressing the young people listening, obviously over 18, but I think it’s a thing, if you start it young, your future self thanks you exponentially. Because actually you start every year, and you’re not obliged to buy a lot, but try to buy a case of something nice in Burgundy, Bordeaux or another region, doesn’t matter. When you’re 25 and then you have more means, you try to buy more, you store. And I think you start at 25, when you’re 35 it’s already 10 years that you’ve made your cellar that you’ve filled every year, you’ve already done a crazy thing. When you’re 50 you have your last 25 years of buying and that must be a crazy thing. Vincent: Absolutely. Antoine: It’s something I need to start doing. It was a good reminder. I should have several copies of the same bottle in my cellar. It’s really something I need to start doing. Vincent: Otherwise, there’s another tip, which is you have to work in wine. Antoine: That’s why I do a podcast you see. It was the good excuse to try to gather tastings and bottles. Vincent: By the way I take this opportunity to say we’re recruiting a young export zone manager. Antoine: The message has been received. How do you apply? Vincent: You send an email to Chanson, on the website, then to contact, then go. Antoine: Off we go. And it’s for which zone? Vincent: Rather Europe. Antoine: Is it based in Beaune? Vincent: In Beaune, yes. Because although everyone thinks now you can be in remote work to do many things. Which is true. It can apply to many sectors or industries. But if you want to be credible when working in wine, you have to live there. Because otherwise you’re not credible to embody it. By the way I receive many applications that tell me: “Can I stay in Lyon, anyway I’m going to travel, no point being in Beaune?” No. When you go see a client, an importer, a sommelier, a wine merchant, you can’t tell him: “The weather was great, flowering went super well, or harvest, great, we just had one day of rain.” You sell as if you were selling anything. Selling, it’s not a dirty word if you do it with sincerity and authenticity. You want to share something where certainly there’s an added value you want to find in the act of sale. Once again, if you want to do it authentically you have to live there. You have to live this trade. I may not have used this word enough in this interview: passion. The most important thing is passion. It’s not knowledge, the number of bottles or the name you can drop, I’ve already tasted this, that, whatever, that’s showing off, swagger. The real thing in my opinion, in any case my fuel, is that I only recruit in my team people who have passion. I prefer someone who knows wine less but who has a real passion to want to take an interest and enter it and who has this aptitude to, both feel this emotion and be able then to convey it to other people, that’s the most important of all. Antoine: That’s clear. It’s the case in many trades but all the more so in wine, I think you have no choice. Anyway on being on site, being part of a team, I suppose sometimes it can be during harvest coming to lend a hand, even just coming to see, and being on the sorting tables. Vincent: Absolutely, smelling, seeing the news, seeing what’s happening. Antoine: I think it’s super important. In any case the message has been received. I don’t know if we’ll bring you the best male or female candidate. Vincent: I’m sure of it. Antoine: Say it if you come on our recommendation, or if not, listen to the podcast before your interview. Vincent: Plus I gave plenty of keys, so it’s going to be very easy to seduce me. Antoine: You know we had that. We’d gone to visit a cooperative in the southwest called Plaimont. A very nice cooperative that does incredible work on forgotten grape varieties. We saw them last week in a tasting they were doing in Paris. They told us actually that candidates had listened to the podcast before coming and so they arrived and knew lots of things. If that’s your case and you’re preparing your interview with Vincent, well played! You’ve passed a first step in the process. You can ask them during the interview if they listened to the podcast. Vincent: Absolutely. I’ll detect it. Antoine: Vincent, we did a nice tour anyway. Vincent: Yes, I was a bit long, sorry. Antoine: No, it’s made for that. You’re not far from being the longest. Vincent: That was the introduction, actually. Antoine: Yes, the rest we’ll do at lunch, without microphone. We discover Chanson everywhere, on all the beautiful tables or at all the good wine merchants, obviously. Vincent: In France, and worldwide, yes.
We can follow you, I suppose, everywhere too.
Vincent: So, yes. I’m going to come across as an old fart, I’m 50. It’s true I’m not a huge fan of all these social networks. But I have a very young team. I only have 30-somethings around me. So they handle all that. Antoine: And they do really cool stuff. Vincent: Exactly. We’re going to develop that because it’s true that marketing properly speaking, communication is not a great strength of Burgundy. It doesn’t need it as much as that. Nevertheless you have to live with the times. There are people who are curious and it’s a way to reach them. You shouldn’t be, how to say, withered in your cave, you have to live with the times. Indeed, I have my team, I only have women and men of 30 or 35 around me in terms of managers and they have this aspiration.
It’s one of your ways of keeping the link with the person who’ll drink the wine in the end, and who appreciates it.
Vincent: Absolutely. There’s a concept of associating digital and physical. Nothing replaces coming in person. Here we have a tasting room with Pauline who handles welcoming people who come to the tasting room. It’s not just a tasting room with bottles to sell. There’s also the possibility to visit our cellars, taste wines, learn things. I think it’s a great experience. The site is remarkable. A 15th-century bastion you don’t see every day. Plus the soul of the wine is also in the furniture. Antoine: In the walls. Vincent: Exactly. There are 1750 years, there are over 200 years of history in the room we’re in. People did the same thing as us, tasting wines, talking about them 250 years ago. That’s still fabulous. In any case I’m very sensitive to that. I think when people come here there’s that supplement too in the wine. It’s not just grapes that fermented, that were aged in barrels and that we bottled. There are plenty of other things in there. There’s history, climat, an atmosphere, a state of mind. A philosophy even of the vine let’s say, without overdoing it, but still. And that you can only perceive if you’ve come on site. Antoine: Yes, that’s clear. Come to Beaune, it’s ultra accessible by train, by TGV, by car, you arrive in Dijon, in Beaune, but really. This is the second time I’ve come to Beaune. It’s really a pleasure to spend time in Burgundy, to be on site. I recommend you do the same and you’ll be very well received here at Domaine Chanson. Vincent: There are great restaurants, the countryside is magnificent. Antoine: There it is, you have everything. Vincent, I have three remaining questions which are traditional in this podcast. You won’t escape them, even if I sense you’re trying to deviate from them.
The first is: do you have a wine book to recommend?
Vincent: So, yes, I have a book. I had a bit of trouble at first because you’d warned me. You’d asked me the question but just before the interview. Actually I’m not a big reader because for me it’s information. I prefer practice to reading. Nevertheless, there’s an excellent book that was written by Jasper Morris who is English, as his name indicates. He lives in Burgundy. He’s a guy who had a great career with wine merchants like Berry Brothers. He was a buyer there. And he even had his own importation company or agency in the British market. And he worked with the Hospices de Beaune too. A guy with an encyclopedic culture on wine, precisely. So he wrote, not an encyclopedia, but a book that’s super good on wine. I don’t remember exactly the title, but anyway if we look it up. Antoine: I think it’s Inside Burgundy. Vincent: Inside Burgundy, exactly, you know better than me. I have it in my office and it’s an excellent reference, extremely precise, rigorous, and hyper detailed. For people who like info and detail, there’s everything you need.
Antoine: There’s everything you need. Vincent: And the guy is super nice on top. Antoine: I was just going to say, I’d love to interview him one of these days, that wouldn’t be a bad reason to come back.
Do you have a recent favorite tasting? A particular emotion.
Vincent: A wine I tasted recently, from us, I won’t give just one because it’d be a bit too biased. In July, I had a visit from great wine connoisseurs from the United States. For a dinner I took a bottle of Clos des Mouches 1955 because one of the people was born in 1955. Plus it’s a very nice vintage. It was sumptuous. The thing you don’t forget. Antoine: I can well believe it, yes. Vincent: I’d never drunk Clos des Mouches from 55 and it was grandiose. Then, more recently, in Burgundy, I was with family at a restaurant. We took a Rully blanc, from a producer of a domaine called Dureuil-Janthial which is in Rully, who makes whites and reds. I haven’t tasted his red but the whites are super good. There’s a thing I love. When you buy a bottle of wine from a producer, from a hyper prestigious appellation, of a vintage known to be extraordinary, your level of expectation is so high that very frankly, in the majority of cases, you’re disappointed. Because you put it in, you have a huge expectation. What I love is being surprised. Dureuil, that I already knew. He’s a very good producer, so you know you’ll have a good wine. Rully, it’s a very nice appellation but well, it’s an appellation of the Côte Chalonnaise. It’s not Meursault or Puligny. I feel less stupid when I buy that and find it super good. I tell myself I didn’t have to spend a fortune. It’s superb and there I feel intelligent having bought such a wine. That’s the smart buy. I love smart buys. Actually, very great wines unfortunately are increasingly just for people who can afford them income-wise, it’s a shame. But well, that’s the way of the world. We won’t complain either, but I mean you shouldn’t be deterred because of the price of certain bottles. There are plenty of hidden treasures in Burgundy for the slightly clever. And then, to be a bit more open, I love a Spanish wine called Valbuena. It’s a kind of second wine of Vega Sicilia for those looking. It’s a wine where I really had a favorite. Not recently but in my life because one day someone served it to me blind. It was friends when I worked at Bouchard Père et Fils. They bring me a glass, we were in London during Burgundy Week. They bring me a glass with red wine, so what is it? I say it’s super, magnificent, extraordinary. It must be a prestigious premier cru or grand cru of the Côte de Nuits. I’d say a 99. My colleague and friend now, tells me: “The vintage is fine, you’re not too far, but the region you’re ‘miles away.’” So it was a Valbuena 96, if I remember right. I’d told myself “Wow!” The prejudice of the French idiot not being able to imagine that a Spanish wine could be extraordinary. For me it was a revelation. Now my brother-in-law knows very well what to buy me for Christmas when he wants to please me. I have a few Unico and Valbuena, it’s a great memory. And then Tuesday evening, I was in Saumur because we have a sister company based in Saumur called Langlois-Château which makes crémants, Saumur Champigny, Saumur whites, Sancerre. We went with the boss for dinner. We obviously drank his wines which are super good. And I rediscovered a Coteau du Layon, Pierre Bise. It was the 2001 vintage, if my memory is right. And there same, it’s extraordinary. These are wines we drink less and less, sweet wines, well I don’t drink them very often. Plus in Burgundy, but here for the matter, there’s a thing missing, there aren’t any. There are a few who try, but well, it’s not very frequent. And there it is, it also gave me a great memory of my time in Bordeaux with Sauternes. Well it’s not the same wine but you still find similar notes. And then also in my life I had the chance to sell wines from Hungary, Tokay, 3 Puttonyos, 4 Puttonyos, 5 Puttonyos, Eszencia. At one time it had been a bit of fashion for some Bordeaux groups to invest there. It also reminded me precisely of my beginnings when I started in this fabulous world of wine.
All these references are noted. We’ll try to taste a bit of all this and pay tribute to you through these tastings. I have one last question. Who should be the next person to come to this microphone in these interviews?
Vincent: The next person, it has to be a friend. Antoine: Or someone you don’t really like and that you want me to… Vincent: No, I think spontaneously of my first boss in Burgundy, called Bernard Hervet. He was at the time the head of Bouchard Père et Fils. He’s a Breton by origin who didn’t have particularly, how to say, ties with the wine world. His family wasn’t from wine. He wasn’t from Burgundy. He arrived here, but he’ll tell you about it if you interview him, more than 20 years ago. He was my first boss 20 years ago. He’s the one who gave me my chance when I arrived in Burgundy, who believed in me. And it turns out he was my boss at Bouchard and then my boss at Faiveley. So we worked together a lot professionally. I have great respect. He’s a man who knows wine super well. I wouldn’t say wine in terms of tasting only, but even in all its dimension, economic, political, and a brilliant mind, and a great music lover too. Antoine: Only qualities. Count on us to try to interview him. For the people listening, stay tuned obviously to this podcast. You’ll perhaps have the chance to have this interview with Bernard. Vincent, thank you so much for the time we spent together. It was ultra interesting, we had a blast. We chatted quite a bit. Vincent: Thank you. Antoine: We did a nice tour. I hope it gave our listeners the desire to discover Domaine Chanson if they don’t know it yet, or to come back to it if they know it, if they don’t have any in their cellar. Vincent: They’ll be welcome. Antoine: For the people listening, share this episode obviously. Give it a five-star rating, sign up for the newsletter. Send us a message if you like these little tastings. It’s pretty new in the podcast, so tell us what you think. I’ll see you in two weeks. Vincent, see you very soon. Vincent: Thank you very much.
