For the 60th episode of the Wine Makers Show, your wine podcast, we headed to Burgundy to meet Laurent Delaunay. Laurent has an incredible story. When he inherited the Burgundy house Edouard Delaunay, founded by his great-grandparents, he hit a wall and was forced to sell. He left, with his wife, for the Languedoc. A few years later, he came back to Burgundy and revived (and much more) the house bearing his name.
Antoine: I’m really happy to be in Burgundy, it’s a feeling that goes both ways. We talked about it a bit in earlier episodes, but we haven’t been to Burgundy much so far. We’ve travelled a lot to Bordeaux, but Burgundy is still pretty new for us. We’re really happy to discover all these specificities, all these domaines, all these houses, and so on. Laurent: Especially since the day is absolutely magnificent. It’s the right season too. It’s the most beautiful season to discover Burgundy, between the end of the vinifications and the end of October, the month of November which is quite emblematic and legendary in the region. In three weeks, we’ll have the Hospices de Beaune wine sale, which is a great moment. It’s exactly the right time. Antoine: We have to come back for the Hospices de Beaune sale. Laurent: Yes, you have to, because it’s really the great period of the great days, the trois glorieuses, as we say, of the Burgundy vineyard. Antoine: I’m in the process of booking my appointments for all the coming months: the Hospices de Beaune sale, in the other episodes we talked a fair bit about Burgundy Week too, in London. Laurent: Yes, early January. Antoine: Exactly. Laurent: If I may, there’s a third episode, less well known, but particularly close to my heart, which is the Hospices de Nuits sale, in Nuits-Saint-Georges. Far less known than the Hospices de Beaune, but worth rediscovering. Same principle as the Hospices de Beaune, exactly the same thing, except it takes place a bit later in the season. It happens in March, the third Sunday of March. It’s the same principle. These are the wines belonging to the Hospices de Nuits-Saint-Georges domaine. Twelve hectares of Nuits-Saint-Georges and Nuits-Saint-Georges premier cru, absolutely superb. More confidential because it’s smaller and overshadowed by its big sister in Beaune, but for us, as Nuiton folk, it’s particularly close to our hearts. Antoine: Noted. So I have my appointments for November, January and March. Laurent: There you go, we’ll be delighted to welcome you again.
Let’s get straight into it, can you start by introducing yourself?
Laurent: I’m Laurent Delaunay, I’m the president and founder of Badet Clément. Well, not the president and founder, but I’ll tell you the story which is a bit unusual. Owner also of Edouard Delaunay, here in Burgundy.
Great, thanks so much for hosting us. We’ll dig into that a bit. How did you come to the wine world?
Laurent: It’s genetic. I was born with a genetic heritage where wine was part of it, certainly an extra chromosome. It’s a family thing. In my family, I’m the descendant of five generations of Burgundy producers and négociants. I was raised in this world from a very young age. My oldest, most distant memories revolve around wine. It’s all of my childhood. Like many boys, I wanted to be a fireman, then a fighter pilot around fourteen, but I was colorblind, so fighter pilot was off the cards. At fourteen or fifteen I started taking a real interest in the vine, in wine, in the cellar. We really had a kind of family culture that revolved completely around it. My parents lived above the cellar. I played in the cellar from a very young age. I made my first mischief in a vat room and a cellar. From the age, well, it’s maybe not so politically correct to say this nowadays, but from ten or eleven, every Sunday at the end of the family meal my father would fetch a bottle and have me smell it, have me taste it a little later, but at least smell it at that age. It was quite playful. We were invited, my sisters and I, to try to identify the aromas we smelled, was it old, was it not old. We were initiated into Burgundy wine tasting and into blind tasting. It became a kind of game. The more it went, the more we had to try to find the wine in question. It was a riddle we almost waited for impatiently every Sunday. Antoine: Don’t worry, you’re clearly not the worst person I’ve interviewed in this podcast. There’s one I won’t name but the regular listeners will know who it is, who used to finish his parents’ glasses of port at seven or eight years old, so ten or eleven is very respectable. Laurent: I did some other things too.
Was there a bit of competition between your siblings on those Sunday moments?
Laurent: I have two sisters. It wasn’t really a competition. Each of us expressed ourselves. I had a sister who was a bit allergic to wine. I think first of all she’s the youngest. She has completely changed since, she works here with us now. But she didn’t drink a single drop of wine until she was eighteen or nineteen. I think it was more a kind of reaction to the family environment. It was certainly a way to position herself a little differently. Antoine: That’s funny. I get the impression there are a bit of both paths, but in the end it always comes back together. At one point we were with Francine Picard in a previous interview, and it was a bit the same actually. She rejected the wine world for a very long time. Laurent: She ended up coming to it, and in what a way!
Exactly. It’s always quite an incredible journey. So you always had this presence of the wine world. Did you have an aha moment where you said: “All this is nice, now I really want to make it my career,” or did you slide into it bit by bit?
Laurent: It came quite progressively. Actually for me, my family branch, my father in particular, was the négoce side. That is to say in the family we had both vines and a négociant-éleveur side. My father took care of the négoce house. For us it was almost more wine, oenology, vinification, ageing, and so on. It’s true that around fourteen years old, and it was certainly also a kind of reaction to the family environment, I discovered a lot of interest in viticulture, in the vine. I had always had a particular attraction for the agricultural world. When I was little, in L’Étang-Vergy, our village in the Hautes Côtes de Nuits, there was a farm across from my house. I spent my childhood, from about seven or eight, going to the farm. There were cows, going for the harvest, going to collect the bales of straw, and so on. It was absolutely my playground. I had a kind of specific attraction for agriculture and the agricultural world. In the family I had one of my uncles who was a winegrower, who lived in the village next door. Quite naturally that’s what passionate me first. Around fourteen or fifteen I really started getting interested in viticulture, in these wine-growing traditions, this agricultural side. I was at high school. I’d come home Friday night and Saturday morning, at seven, I’d go almost wake up my uncle, sometimes, because I wanted to go help him prune, hoe the vine. I really wanted to be in contact with nature, with the soil. It was something I really loved. Later, after my baccalaureate, I studied viticulture and oenology. I did a BTS in viticulture/oenology. I came in more from the viticultural side but the oenological side started interesting me more and more. Actually the more I went on the more I realized I needed to know a bit more about vinification, about wine, and so on. The more I went on, the more I also saw that the horizon was clearing a bit in front of me and that one day I’d have to start working. It interested me more and more, it passionate me, and I’d have to join my father, my uncle, and so on. I oriented myself more and more toward oenology. After my BTS in viticulture/oenology, I did my oenology diploma in Dijon. That’s where I met my wife, Catherine, who is an oenologist like me, who comes from the Beaujolais, from a family of winegrowers. At that time my cousin, named Édouard, was destined to take over the commercial side of the négoce house. Édouard was a year or two older than me. There was a kind of natural division between us, and we wanted to work together and become the next generation, the fifth generation. Édouard was supposed to take over the commercial side and me the technical, oenological side, and so on. That’s what I was destined for. In between, I went to the United States for a year, to California, where I worked in the Napa Valley as an assistant winemaker. I studied at UC Davis, which completed my whole curriculum. Then I did my military service. By the time I came back, Édouard, who was a year or two older than me, had started working with my father and my uncle. Eventually after a year or two, he realized it wasn’t what he had dreamed of. He wanted to leave for other horizons. I suddenly found myself all alone, facing the void. There I learned viticulture, I learned oenology, but now Laurent you’ll have to run a wine house and that’s not so easy. I was missing the economic, commercial side, and so on. I looked at what I could do, and it was right around the time of my military service, I had a bit of time ahead of me. So I had the chance to be able, during my military service, to prepare for entrance exams and I joined, on leaving my military service, ESSEC. So I could attend a fine business school to round out my viticulture/oenology curriculum. It gave me, how shall I say, training at least in commerce, economics, marketing, and so on. I joined my father right after, on leaving. We were at the end of ‘89. I was destined quite naturally to take over, to be the next generation. I had a number of ideas, things I wanted to do, to improve. I was really in a mindset, especially having come back from the United States where I had seen, at the time it was a vineyard region, California, that was still in development, just how much they were always in a logic of permanent improvement, of experimentation and so on. Whereas at that time, in Burgundy, we tended often to rest on our laurels. I came back a bit with that mentality. I already saw a number of small things to improve and I saw myself taking over. That’s what I started to do, and then things didn’t quite happen as I thought. Because actually I realized, when I started working with my father, that some of his decisions, his reactions, didn’t always seem, how shall I say, rational to me. I realized there were some problems. Eventually, talking about it as a family, he went to consult and we realized he had Alzheimer’s. It was actually the very early days of when this disease, still quite poorly understood, was beginning to be identified. We were in ‘90, ‘91. I wasn’t quite 25. The void was even more important in front of me because I said to myself: “I’m not going to be able to count on my father as long as I had planned.” The transition was going to have to be much faster than expected because his situation, his condition was deteriorating very quickly. We went through some difficult moments. It was also a period when things were complicated economically. It was the period of the first Gulf War. At that time Burgundy wines were sometimes still a bit complicated to sell. It wasn’t always as easy as that. When everything was going well, things went well. When the economic situation was good there was demand and there was no problem. As soon as it got tense, it became much more complicated. We were exactly in that type of phase. So there I was, not quite twenty-five, for two or three years, I did everything to try to save the house. After two or three years I had to face the fact that I wasn’t going to manage on my own. I had to take care, after talking about it with the rest of the family, of finding a buyer because we had to sell. We found a buyer and we sold the family house after five generations, a decision not easy to take, in ‘93, early ‘93. My wife and I, Catherine had joined me already for some time to help, we accompanied the transition. It lasted about another two years, two and a half, where we brought the baby into the new group. I ran what had become a subsidiary in a group but which remained Maison Delaunay. After two years, two and a half, once that transition was well secured and we had fulfilled our duty in a way, with Catherine we said: “This isn’t quite what we wanted to do. What we want is to be independent, we want to make our own wines, we have our own ideas.” So we resigned and we decided to start over. And we started over completely elsewhere and differently because both we had lived through some not easy years in Burgundy, we wanted to turn the page a bit and change the air. On the other hand we had no means, no money, we were just the two of us with our good will, but that’s about it. Burgundy was already at the time an expensive region. Starting something again in Burgundy was beyond our reach at that moment. And we saw what was happening. I always had this American experience behind me. Actually we were seduced and quite interested by what was happening in the Languedoc at that time. We were really at the beginning, in the middle of a period of complete transformation of the Languedoc vineyard which was evolving from a vineyard producing large volumes of rather entry-level wines, toward a much more qualitative vineyard in which they had started planting, cultivating many grape varieties. What we call in our jargon “international varieties,” all of which originate in France but for example merlot, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, syrah. That was actually one of the elements that was quite fascinating for us, who were young Burgundy oenologists coming from a region where we essentially cultivate two grape varieties, well four if I add aligoté and a bit of Gamay, but to arrive in a region where we could play with a multitude of grape varieties, and so on. We restarted in the Languedoc on an extraordinarily small scale, we had no money, no cellar, no vat room. So we just managed to convince a few local winegrowers to let us vinify a little wine to our taste, in their cellars, by committing to take the wine in question. And so, we restarted like that, on a tiny scale. Catherine took care of the technical side, the vinification, the bottling. I took care more of the marketing, commercial side. It was an absolutely fabulous period. We were extremely free, it was just the two of us. It was, how shall I say, we lived on love and fresh water and pure air, with a little wine sales of course but very small. It started on a very small scale. We were lucky to have a friend who was an American importer, who was a family friend for quite some time who believed in our project. He helped us, opened the American market for us and started importing our products to the United States. That gave us a leg up and we started like that, by selling a little wine in the United States the first year. The second year I took my car. I went a bit to England, a bit to Germany and we started having a few small orders. Things developed like that. We were also lucky that our wines fit perfectly with the spirit of that time. What we created at that time is our brand, which remains our main brand called Les Jamelles, which was a brand, and is still a varietal wine brand, essentially pure varietals. We started with a fairly short range of three or four varieties and now we work with twenty-three different varieties I believe. We had very good results in the press. People found that it really matched the market expectations, and the international market in particular regarding French wines. It’s a kind of slightly more relaxed approach to French wines. It’s true that we’re in a country where we have such a wine culture. We don’t always realize how difficult it can be to understand. It can disconcert international consumers a bit. It’s so complex between our terroirs, our regions, our geography, our châteaux, our domaines, our appellations, our premier crus… Our crus classés, it’s extraordinarily complex. The interest of varietal wines is that it simplified, made things a bit more relaxed. We had a lot of success. From the start it took off very quickly and from ‘95, the year we started, to 2003 we did just that. We developed in the Languedoc. A bit later we were able to buy a vat room, then a bit of vines. We bought other houses and things continued like that. We came back to Burgundy in 2003 because a friend of my father’s who owned a tiny company that distributed wines from family-run and independent Burgundy domaines, who helped a number of winegrowers who don’t have a sales force commercialize their wines, on a very small scale, was retiring. He contacted me to say he wanted to sell his business and had thought of us. It interested me because it allowed me to come back to Burgundy, with a slightly different activity, but to gain a foothold in Burgundy again. That was in 2003. From 2003 to a few years ago, in recent years, we developed both the Burgundy side through the distribution of domaine wines. That allowed us to come into contact, to work daily with a multitude of Burgundy domaines. We were able to gain a foothold in Burgundy and keep contact. I remain Burgundian by origin, by heart, by soul. We always had a small frustration somewhere. We continued to develop the Languedoc at the same time, which kept developing well. Now, we’re certainly among the top five operators in the Languedoc. In the Languedoc we currently have three vat rooms, one hundred and forty hectares of vines and distribution in many countries. It works very well, it’s extremely important for us. I always had this small frustration somewhere, over the years and as time passed, of not making my own wines in Burgundy. Over the past ten years or so I looked at different possibilities, different opportunities, possibly buying a bit of vines. I had one or two opportunities to maybe buy small houses, things like that. But it was never exactly what suited me. And then, an absolutely incredible coincidence. In 2016, I ran into a bit by chance the people to whom my father and I had sold the family Delaunay house in ‘93. Over coffee and asking them if it was strategic for them and if possibly they would accept one day maybe to sell it back to me. They told me to make them a proposal and they would study it. I worked hard on my subject. I made a proposal and I ended up buying back the family house in 2017, twenty-four years after selling it. A kind of return to the source, a loop that closed in a totally unexpected way. It’s not a strategy. It’s certainly not a revenge because I had always kept excellent contacts with them. It’s more like a sign of providence, a lucky star and an alignment of planets that made it possible. So that was 2017, the buyback of Maison Édouard Delaunay with the project of relaunching it, of really re-establishing it among the Burgundy elite.
Thanks so much for this overview, there are plenty of elements I want to dig into a bit and see. First, congratulations of course on this journey. Actually, there’s something funny, I’ll ask you a few questions later, but in your story there’s something quite funny, which is that in itself, it was super hard.
Laurent: There were some moments more difficult than others, there were also some very beautiful moments. Antoine: Actually when you look at the thing, you inherit a Burgundy house. In itself, you might say: “He’s well off, he inherits, etc.,” whereas actually not at all. You started over from nothing and had to redo everything, I really admire that. I’m an entrepreneur too and it’s really something I’m passionate about, people who start over from nothing and say: “It doesn’t matter, we’ll go to the south and see what happens, we’ll make a little wine.” Really, I find that super cool.
To dig into that a bit, I want to understand, how do those first steps in the Languedoc go? You arrive, you convince a few winegrowers to give you a bit of juice or some grapes. How do you do it? You arrive, you knock on their door and say: “Hello, we saw you had vines.”
Laurent: What I told was a tiny bit caricatured. It wasn’t quite as simple as that. That is to say, both we had a few contacts, friends, study friends, family friends, and so on. My father had always been interested in that region. He had quite a few connections there. We activated a bit the contacts we had. It’s a profession where relationships are what’s most important actually. So you can’t do anything in this profession without relationships. It’s a network business, whether upstream, for sourcing, or downstream, for sales. If there’s one thing to understand, it’s really that. We were helped by quite a few people who found us young and friendly, who introduced us to others and so on. We had another approach alongside that which was a slightly systematic approach with simply a geological map of the region saying: “If we want to make chardonnays it gives a better result on clay-limestone terroirs. Where are there clay-limestone terroirs? It’s maybe better to go a bit higher in altitude to have a bit of freshness. So where are there clay-limestone terroirs a bit at altitude?” And we arrive at certain places, in Limoux, on the foothills of the Cévennes. In part, and often actually, recommended by some and others, by explaining that we were specifically interested in certain terroirs, but also sometimes by driving through the region and seeing beautiful chardonnay vines, well kept, and stopping at the edge of the parcel and talking with the winegrowers, the neighboring winegrowers: “Hey, who does this parcel belong to? It belongs to so-and-so, in such-and-such village.” We go to the village, we try to find the person, we knock on the door, we introduce ourselves. It was really, yes, it was really a bit of an adventure. There was a bit of a bohemian side that was very nice. Beyond all that we were marvelously well received. I think we must have appeared friendly. We were two young oenologists, a small couple, there was maybe a touching little side, but beyond that the Languedoc-Roussillon at that time was a region that was in full transformation. I was always struck because this region is sometimes described as a slightly rough region, with people who have strong personalities, all that’s true. But they have an absolutely incredible sense of hospitality.
Hospitality, it’s incredible.
Laurent: A hospitality, an openness. Actually they were demanding, they were looking for partnerships with people who could bring know-how from other regions. When you start planting grape varieties that aren’t varieties native to your region, it’s better to get a little help from people who know how to work those varieties. We didn’t have that much experience. We had family experience, really in chardonnay, in pinot noir. In California, I had worked a lot on cabernet sauvignon, on merlot, on syrah, too. We had a bit of that to our credit but we were extremely well received. There was practically an expectation. We arrived at a time when there was an expectation. And I must say there are many partnerships we set up at that time that still exist. From the moment you respect people, you respect their way of life, their terroir, it goes very well. It’s quite incredible everything that happened in the Languedoc over twenty-five, thirty years. There was this whole wave of plantings of grape varieties that often arrived from elsewhere. There was actually in the nineties this welcome of people coming almost from the four corners of the world. It’s the era when Australians arrived too. Quite a few Australians invested, took an interest in the Languedoc. Californians, we remember the stories of Gallo, Mondavi etc. who had tried to set up. All the French took an interest in the Languedoc at that time, people from the Loire valley, Bordeaux folk, Burgundy folk. I think everyone benefited more or less from the same welcome. Maybe not everyone understood that they had to adapt to the local culture. We, one of the points we had, is that we were small, young, without preconceived ideas. We didn’t arrive there saying: “We come from a great region and we have all the answers. We’re going to teach you how to do it and what we know how to do in Burgundy is exactly how it should be done in the Languedoc.” Not at all, on the contrary. Somewhere we maybe felt a tiny illegitimacy. We really needed to try to gain a foothold, to settle into the local culture. We were very attentive. Actually, it’s quite interesting to see that there was this kind of boom in the nineties. It’s far back but there are many operators, from large French regions or international, who ended up leaving the region. They didn’t stay. They tried for five years, ten years, and they ended up leaving. If I look at the common point a bit, it’s that these are people who had an approach maybe a bit too sure of themselves, with maybe a bit too much arrogance and who didn’t accept to bend, not even bend but to take position in the local culture. From all points of view, from a purely cultural point of view, but also it’s a great wine terroir. It’s a multitude of great wine terroirs. It’s the oldest production region in France. The Narbonnaise, that dates from the history of the Romans actually. There’s know-how in this region, there’s a reality of terroirs. It’s an absolutely immense region with a multitude of different terroirs. We always said: “No one knows the terroirs better than the local winegrowers. So we have to have a deeper partnership with them to manage to make something.” What we knew above all how to do was make wine, vinify and commercialize. But for the whole viticulture side, local establishment, knowledge of local, precise, intrinsic specificities of the vineyards, the local winegrowers knew them much better than we did. We immediately had this relationship. And then there was another factor too, which is that we were tiny. The strategic stakes were maybe less important. When there were a bit more difficult periods, I remember, in ninety-eight or ninety-nine, the market was a kind of bubble that had developed then at one point exploded and completely closed up. I remember for chardonnays, prices had doubled in two or three years then it was redivided by two in one year. Many operators found this era difficult. It was very difficult for us too, it almost put us in jeopardy. But we were tiny and we slipped through the cracks. The Tom Thumb who started at a tiny scale gradually grew, took its place and a number of giants who were already there left, kind of left the region. Eventually, progressively, we became an important operator in the Languedoc. Antoine: There’s something that’s super interesting in the story you mention, which fascinates me a bit, which is the place you left to time. Because you said you arrive between ‘90 and 2003 right, in the Languedoc? Laurent: ‘95 and 2003. Antoine: ‘95 and 2003. Actually what I mean is, if you start from nothing or not much, you have to do a first year, make wine, sell it, earn a little money, then do the second one a bit bigger. But what I mean is your growth cycle is annual, it can’t be quarterly or monthly. You can’t say: “Okay, this quarter we’re going to do plus thirty percent.” We can reinvest, and so on.
You’re forced to capitalize on the long term, to take your time. Maybe it’s useful to settle in locally, to take your place in the community and not just be there to make a hit and leave afterward, but I find it quite incredible. After, maybe in the wine world you’re used to the long term because it’s something you’ve known for a long time.
Laurent: That’s exactly it, yes. I can speak like an old man in a certain way because I’m starting to have a bit of experience behind me, accumulated experiences, but I think two things, actually. First, indeed, in the wine world, we’re in a world of long time. When you come from Burgundy in particular, if the greatest Burgundy domaines are known and have the reputation they have, it’s because it’s a reputation of excellence accumulated sometimes over four hundred years. These are extremely long times. I love this Burgundy philosophy which is that, well, the great Burgundy vineyards, the great climats of Burgundy really developed from the twelfth century, more or less. There are practically eight hundred years now of accumulated history behind us and that’s what made up Burgundy. We’re passers. We inherit vines that have been developed and whose quality has been pushed to the extreme by generations and generations of winemakers. Our work is to try to cultivate them as well as possible, to do our best, to try to improve absolutely tiny details to pass to the generations after. Actually, in talking with some winemakers who really have this very philosophical approach to viticulture that I absolutely love, we’re not even owners of our vines. We’re a kind of tenants ultimately, they don’t belong to us. They belong to past and future generations. The long time in wine is something we’re really used to and it’s really part of the culture. Beyond that I think that, even in the business world, you absolutely always have to count on the time factor. It’s very good to have a real strategy, it’s very good to want to overturn the table, it’s very good to work enormously. All that’s absolutely indispensable, to create brands, everything we can imagine. But actually, in my opinion, whether in wine or in any field, a brand emerges through the test of time. What makes a label, a name on a bottle, to talk wine, a real recognized brand, is because actually it has braved time. It can be a few years, it can be ten years, it can be much longer, but when we cite the great French wine brands, they’re all brands that have decades and decades. It’s really the test of time that tests, it’s the case to say it, the solidity of brands, and not only brands. I think it’s the same thing in business, in business, etc. Antoine: Yes, that’s clear. There’s an entrepreneur I follow a bit, named Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a saying: “Macro patience and micro speed.” Laurent: Yes, I know. Antoine: It’s being ultra patient over the long term. He has an obsession with buying jets. I won’t have an obsession with buying vines in Nuits-Saint-Georges someday but actually that’s macro patience, because it might happen one day but you have to build something important to do it, but on the other hand micro speed and daily try to do all the actions you can do. Laurent: Sort out all the details and so on. But on top of that, I had the chance, on my modest scale, of having developed a few brands that aren’t too bad in the Les Jamelles brand. It’s really when you look back, it ties in with what you say because actually daily we don’t realize. Every morning we get up, we do our job. It’s important to have a real vision and to be faithful to that vision. That too, again I don’t want to come across as an old fool, but if I can give a little advice to people who really want to create something in wine, it’s also to have real reflection, to have a 360 vision and to have an extremely clear idea of what they want, to have a real strategy and then also to be faithful to it. That is to say it’s the same thing, it ties in with the notion of time. It takes time to test in contact with the consumer, in contact with the prescribers, the validity of a concept and a brand. I see too many people who create a superb label, a great name. We have the feeling of having found something extraordinary. Then they present it to two or three customers, they have objections, and we always have them. We had a lot of them when we started. So they start, they listen to the objections in question too much. They change a few elements in the product. Then eventually, after some time, the product is no longer the original concept at all and it’s not surprising that it doesn’t work. What you have to do is really believe in your convictions, your concepts, your principles and push them very methodically, every day. You have to plow the earth. It’s again a slightly agricultural metaphor, we’re always in the world of viticulture. But every morning you have to get up, plow, take the horse out, hitch the plow and you have to go. After a number of years, and even more after ten, twenty, thirty years like me now, looking back you say there was nevertheless coherence, a certain logic, but it’s also because, well, you have to accept getting back to work every morning and rolling up your sleeves.
Yes, it’s clear. It was Henry Ford who said: “If I had asked people what they wanted at the time they would have answered me: faster horses.” Do you think it would still be possible to do what you did in the Languedoc today? Not in the Languedoc but in another region, is it a model that can still be created?
Laurent: I think it’s possible. There are still people doing it and that too is something quite formidable in the wine world, whether in Languedoc and everywhere, and in Burgundy too. I’m pretty fascinated to see people arriving, young people, who have ideas, who find a positioning, who have a concept and who start from nothing and then succeed not too badly. Here in Burgundy, when we discuss with quite a few people, we tend a bit to complain, to say there were many more houses in the past, that many disappeared, it’s increasingly concentrated. That’s not true. Of course there’s concentration, there are houses that stop, that disappear. There are others that are bought back but there are also plenty of young people setting up, including in a region like Burgundy where you can think, it’s quite true, that access to supply is very complicated and that it costs a lot etc., but I see plenty of people starting with very few things and setting up. It’s the same thing in the Languedoc. I’m pretty admiring of certain small houses that have started to appear relatively recently, more recently than us in particular. I think of people like Calmel & Joseph, people like that who are doing absolutely formidable work. It’s quite possible. It’s maybe a bit harder than in our era, and especially, sorry if I’m too financial and technical, but it certainly requires a bit more capital and investment than was the case in our era. We, when we started in the Languedoc, we had no money at all. It happened that the situation was such that it allowed it to be done, but we were in a period of overproduction at that time. It was quite easy for us, very small, to arrive and convince winegrowers, cellars, small cooperative cellars to allocate us such a vat, the grapes from such parcel of vine, etc. Then ultimately, if during the year we needed a bit more, they always had a vat available. We had much more product available, it was more comfortable. We could work commercially and actually we never had a problem ultimately. The few times we were able to land markets that allowed us to progress but which were larger than we expected. We always managed to find what we were missing and that always went well. It’s becoming different now a bit everywhere, everywhere in France in particular. We’ve pulled up a lot of vines. Viticulture, the surface of the vineyard globally has declined. It’s a very important and very interesting subject of concern and reflection. We have much more difficulty now bringing young people to the viticulture profession. The transmission, the handover from generation to generation goes much more difficultly. We’re now in a situation where supply has dropped a lot, is lower than demand, and so it’s much more difficult indeed. That is to say now we’ve grown a lot, we have structures. That brought us in the Languedoc to completely change business model. That is to say now we have to integrate, in a way, much more upstream. We bought a bit of vines, we have one hundred and forty hectares of vines but now that’s nothing, compared to people like Gérard Bertrand etc. who have eight hundred hectares. We don’t have the vocation, as far as we’re concerned I think, to own and control the land of the totality of what we produce. But this leads us to think about many partnerships upstream with winegrowers, with cellars to have a real partnership, to encourage them to get involved, to encourage them to launch out in some cases and to ensure them an outlet and have long-term contracts, partnerships and everything. And that’s more costly. It also forced us to invest in cellars, vinification and ageing vat rooms. We have three vat rooms in the Languedoc and now we’re indeed obliged to buy many more grapes, to vinify, to store. We find much less easily what we used to find easily on the market before. Both because of course our needs have increased because we’ve grown, but also because there’s much less availability on the market. We’re arriving at a situation in the Languedoc that ultimately resembles a bit what we know well in Burgundy, which is a slightly more rare situation, a scarcity of supply. You have to ensure your supply and that requires a slightly different organization. Antoine: I keep in mind these elements of establishment or possibility. I think it’s a good way actually to start when you’re not a winegrower precisely or when you don’t know the vine well.
Let’s come to Maison Édouard Delaunay. You make this buyback. It must have been something incredible for you and your family, it must have been absolutely magnificent.
Laurent: It was something absolutely incredible, frankly unhoped for. As I was saying earlier, personally, I’m a believer and I believe in providence. For me it’s a sign of providence because it’s something that should never have happened actually and which actually never happens. Burgundy actually is, it’s a real subject of discussion within the Burgundy vineyard, we have many more domaines and houses that are sold sometimes, even often, with the price of the land, to investors, to institutional investors, to foreigners. There’s a real concern actually about keeping this land heritage, cultural heritage, etc. within Burgundy families. We’re more in that situation. A family that sold and buys back twenty-five years later, that’s something that never happens. For sure we had some time, a few weeks where we were absolutely on cloud nine. It was really something magnificent. For us, for me, for my family too, unfortunately many of my parents were gone in the meantime, some of my uncles and aunts too. I really regret that some of them, who had been a bit affected actually by the sale of the house at the time, didn’t see this. But yes, it was something absolutely formidable. Antoine: You talked about it I suppose with your cousin. Laurent: Yes, absolutely, everyone was absolutely thrilled. In the family, my generation, my cousins, it was indeed a great moment of happiness.
Yes, that’s clear. Tell us a bit about what Maison Édouard Delaunay is, what types of wines you have, where you are. Can you describe a bit the landscape we’re going to expose ourselves to after this recording?
Laurent: So, my objective actually, Maison Édouard Delaunay, in the time of previous generations, was a small house, a small traditional Burgundy négociant-éleveur, with a bit of vines also. Rather qualitative, I would say very qualitative. I was raised in that environment, maybe not with the notoriety of the greatest houses and greatest domaines at the time if I go back to the 80s, 90s. First, because we were small and then also because at the time we maybe weren’t the best, the generation of my father and my uncle, to communicate and make it known. But all the people who worked with Maison Delaunay were very favorably impressed by the quality, and the constant quality in particular. When I took over, the Maison had practically disappeared. It was quite comfortable in a way because on one side I was practically starting from a blank page. I could rewrite everything a bit as I conceived it, as I thought, while benefiting ultimately from a small aura that wasn’t very large but there was no baggage. It was rather a good reputation, whether locally or on the markets. Many people no longer remembered Maison Delaunay, that’s true. I have a little anecdote. I did a tasting to present our first 2017 vintage in London. There was Jancis Robinson there, the great and famous English critic who tells me: “It’s incredible. I tasted a bottle of Chambertin ‘83 from your father in Hong Kong, three weeks ago.” It was really, it was a coincidence really fun. Anyway my objective actually was to reinstall Édouard Delaunay really among the Burgundy elite. So when I say that, first it’s very ambitious, but it can even seem quite pretentious because the Burgundy elite, God knows it’s high, it’s elevated. Especially since I was quite struck, I maybe hadn’t completely realized to what extent between the 90s, which were the years when I had kind of left this profession of négoce, of Burgundy négociant-éleveur, and 2017, the year I came back, to what extent the qualitative level had progressed in an absolutely incredible way. It’s incredible to what extent, for twenty, thirty years, the quality of Burgundies has progressed and to what extent the average qualitative level has risen, it’s extraordinary. The challenge was very ambitious. My objective actually, since what we bought back is essentially a brand, a name, so the possibility of making wines with my family name and with the name of Maison Édouard Delaunay which was the name of my great-grandfather, who was the founder. What we also bought back are buildings, cellar, vat room, which were my family’s buildings in which I was raised, in which I played as a child. The project took shape very quickly in my head. Objective: build what we call in Burgundy a micro négoce. The Anglo-Saxons say: “Boutique Winery.” No vines, so find grapes. Actually three directions on which we worked starting from the takeover. First thing, since we got the buildings. The buildings were in a state. The vinification tool in particular, there was nothing left. It was in a fairly degraded state. First thing actually we launched renovation work to build a vinification tool of the highest possible quality. We had about a year of work, practically, to bring the buildings up to standard. You’ll see them later, we’ll visit them. Redo the interior in particular of the buildings, from floor to ceiling practically and equip these buildings with state-of-the-art vinification and ageing equipment allowing us to have really optimal control over working methods. Second thing: I also had to build a team because I continued to supervise the Languedoc, etc. I couldn’t do everything alone even though I had quite precise ideas of what I wanted to do. It’s the same thing, I looked, we built a team, we recruited. I found two people, one in particular, a young oenologist named Christophe Briotet, whose family I knew. Our families had known each other for a long time. Christophe is of Burgundy origin, he’s an oenologist, agricultural engineer. He just turned 37 yesterday. So he worked in Burgundy in several beautiful domaines and a bit abroad too. It’s interesting for me that he has an international vision. Over the past five years he was the oenologist, head cellarmaster of the Beaune wine school, the Beaune viticulture school. So in contact with all the young Burgundians who come to train in viticulture and oenology, a very interesting experience. Christophe accepted to join us. Then also, for the wink and the anecdote, I also hired Didier Verpeau, who is our head cellarmaster and originally from L’Étang-Vergy, my home village. He lives at the other end of the village. His father was a cellarmaster, his uncle was a cellarmaster with us, so a family tradition. He’s now coming to the end of his career, but he had a career as a cellarmaster in several very beautiful, lovely Burgundy houses. So second step, build this team. And third step, the most difficult actually, find grapes. And there I admit that, while the first two phases are things that are planned, that fit in an Excel spreadsheet, it’s not very complicated actually. The third one I had great uncertainty about what we would be able to find as grapes because we wanted to find grapes of the most beautiful possible quality on the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune because our objective was really to focus on the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune, the qualitative heart of Burgundy and to build a small range of about twenty appellations to start. That can seem like a lot but we’re in a region, Burgundy, where we have an absolutely incredible number of appellations. We had this objective, about twenty Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune appellations. That’s where I called on all my network. Both the family, friendly network. One of my sisters and her husband are winegrowers in Meursault. I have several cousins who are winegrowers, all my best friends are winegrowers here in Burgundy. And then I was saying earlier we also have, we had bought back in 2003 this small structure for commercializing domaine wines, which we developed a lot in the meantime, and which now works with about one hundred and eighty domaines in Burgundy. That gives us a quite incomparable network actually here in Burgundy. We contacted everyone and ultimately I was quite surprised, and happily surprised. That too was a great moment of happiness. Many of the domaines in question, the winegrowers in question accepted to sell us a bit of grapes. Including people who normally don’t sell grapes, but who told me: “Laurent, we’re so happy for you, we’re so happy for your family, it’s a great story. Normally we don’t sell grapes, but go on, the equivalent of one or two pieces, you’ll always find that with us, it’ll always be available for you.” We started like that and our first vintage was 2017. From there we worked very closely with Christophe. We both have in common being people, I think, quite precise, quite meticulous. And we had a quite precise idea of what we wanted. Then we have a way of working actually that’s everything except applying a recipe. That is to say we really start from the vine. We buy the grapes which are the grapes from a parcel of vines. It really starts with a discussion with the winegrower with whom we’re in contact and really with him the choice of a parcel where he accepts to sell us grapes and a parcel that interests us. It’s really first a terroir work. When we see this parcel with Christophe, we immediately have, knowing Burgundy and the different terroirs well, we immediately have a very precise idea of the wine we’ll be able to obtain depending on the parcel’s location, depending on its orientation. Are these deep soils, stony soils, is there a lot of clay, red earth, more yellow earth, etc., the age of the vines, the quality of the grapes. By really seeing the vine as harvest approaches we have a clear idea in mind of what we’ll be able to obtain, what the wine will look like, what its natural characteristics will be actually. Then, it’s just a question of adapting to ultimately help the wine, in a way, reveal the character it already has within it. I often make the analogy with the role of parents. The role of parents ultimately for me is putting the children in the best possible conditions to allow them to express the personality they have within them. All parents know that, from very small, we realize our children have their own personality. They have a real personality and actually you have to put them in the situation to reveal this personality. I think vinifying wine and ageing wine is exactly the same thing. The result of this reflection is that actually on our first twenty 2017 appellations, and we’ve increased a bit since, now we work about thirty wines, there’s not one wine vinified in the same way as its neighbor. All the choices we have to make as a vinifier, whether it’s sorting, whether it’s whether we do a bit of whole bunches, what proportion, yes or no, the maceration time, a bit of cold maceration or not, the temperature, lots of pigeage, the length of maceration. Then all the ageing choices, the types of barrels, the ageing time, whether we’ll rack during ageing or not. Ultimately, each of our wines is worked in a totally different way because we try to adapt to the wine’s personality to try to put it in conditions to express itself best. We don’t have a wine in the end that’s made the same way. So, there’s no house style. There’s no house technique but there’s adaptation and great pragmatism for each type of wine given to us by tasting. If there’s one very important element with us it’s that we spend infinite time tasting. We have a small tasting committee with Christophe, with Catherine, Sylvain Colson who is our head oenologist who has very great experience with Burgundy wines, and me. We spend hours tasting at each stage of the wine’s vinification and ageing. There’s not one decision taken without having done an extremely broad tasting before, barrel by barrel, piece by piece to decide what we’ll do. If there are two key words for me on our way of working, it’s purity and precision. What we want is to have wines that express through their grape varieties, their grape varieties being a bit like the musical instrument that will make the score composed by the composer vibrate. The score is a given that we have, it’s the terroir. The grape variety is the instrument, and then the final result in the bottle is the melody we hear, in a way. We try to express the purity of the terroir through the grape variety and the product. The second key word is precision. Because we’re people who try to work with a lot of precision and precisely a lot of pragmatism, no preconceived ideas, no fixed ideas, but a lot of openness.
That makes you really want to discover, of course. What you said is, today there are about thirty appellations present, essentially in Côte de Beaune, Côte de Nuits always?
Laurent: Yes. And since 2019, first vintage 2017. Now time passes at an absolutely incredible speed because we vinified 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. We already have five campaigns behind us. Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune. We were able to gradually extend our range of appellations because we had more time to find new parcels, to find new agreements and new partnerships with winegrowers. In 2019, two important developments for us after our second year. The first is that in 2019, we were able to take on a bit of vine, two and a half hectares, it’s tiny but it’s a start, in Pommard. We now farm two and a half hectares with Pommard Village and two premier crus that are superb. Les Pézerolles which is north of Pommard, on the Beaune side, and Les Chaponnières which are in the middle of Pommard, just below Les Rugiens which is the most emblematic premier cru of Pommard. We started with the 2019 vintage. We’re extremely happy with these products. This allows us to have indeed better mastery because this time we can cultivate the vines a bit to our taste. We have mastery of the vine’s vegetative cycle. It’s something we’d like to develop a bit in the future but it depends on opportunities which are quite rare. You have to find opportunities, convince owners to accept working with us rather than someone else, but it’s really a direction we want to head in more and more. I’ll talk maybe about land and opportunities to buy vines later, but it’ll tie in with the second important development in 2019. In 2019 we also started working on the Hautes Côtes de Nuits. I’m originally from the Hautes Côtes. My home village L’Étang-Vergy is eight kilometers from Nuits-Saint-Georges, in the heart of the Hautes Côtes, I was raised in this region. I have a real affection for this region. It’s an absolutely magnificent region, a few kilometers to the west, set back from the Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune, more relief, more altitude. The vine is planted only on the best-oriented terroirs. The Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune, we’re almost in monoculture zones with this Burgundy configuration of this côte that’s exposed east and corresponds to an absolutely formidable situation for producing grapes of exceptional quality. The Hautes Côtes are much more varied. It’s a polyculture zone where you have livestock, large crops. You have woods on top of the hills and you have vines only on a few hillsides exposed east, south, west sometimes, but only the best-oriented hillsides. I know this region extremely well. We had, in my father’s time and until the sale, a domaine of about ten hectares in the Hautes Côtes de Nuits. I took care of it when I started working with my father. I was even secretary of the wine union at the time. I know all the producers very well etc. I find these côtes have an exceptional future ahead of them. Particularly in a period of warming and climate change. I’d even go so far as to say it’s certainly one of the answers and solutions to climate change in Burgundy. Since actually if I take the example of L’Étang-Vergy we’re four kilometers as the crow flies from Vosne-Romanée and Clos de Vougeot. We’re one hundred to one hundred fifty meters higher in altitude on terroirs and soils that are quite close, quite comparable. So we manage to have products that naturally keep a freshness, that have very balanced maturities that are revealed actually in recent years with climate warming. In the 70s, 80s the wines of the Hautes Côtes were wines that were acidic, thin, austere. That has completely changed. We now have wines that are really, everything we dream of and everything we love in pinot noir with freshness, elegance, with precisely this slightly more aerial side. Ultimately, there’s a whole work to be done which is the work the monks did. In our Burgundy côte, the côte of climats, from the twelfth century, which is this work precisely of identifying the best terroirs. I don’t know if we say “isolation” or “isolating” of the terroirs in question to vinify them apart with a parcel selection approach to really see, over several years, the potential of the terroirs in question. And who knows, I let myself dream, and I know we’re really in long time particularly in Burgundy, but who knows if in a hundred years it won’t be the future grands crus of Burgundy. It’s an absolutely passionate adventure. We launched into it in 2019 and we continue now to advance, we have real projects in the Hautes Côtes. We created a small range within the Édouard Delaunay family, with a Hautes Côtes de Nuits red and a Hautes Côtes de Nuits white, blend of several parcels and with a parcel selection approach on parcels we vinify apart. There’s one in particular called Le Rouard that we now make since 2019 and which gives very beautiful results. Le Rouard is a parcel between Villars-Fontaine and Concœur for those who know, exposed south, southeast. We’re three kilometers above the vines of Vosne-Romanée. We’re one hundred or one hundred and twenty meters higher in altitude. A situation that’s extremely interesting. We also work on other parcel selections that we haven’t decided to keep so far because they haven’t yet given enough interesting results, but it’s really a direction we want to orient ourselves in more and more. Antoine: Impressive. We can’t wait to discover in the next hundred years. Laurent: If I can just add one thing, one of the things I also dream of, and what I’d really like to do, is also to be able to buy a bit of vines. The Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune have become completely unaffordable. Antoine: It’s not the easiest. Laurent: I’ll never be able to do it on my own. Antoine: We do it together if you want. I’m in. Laurent: Maybe if I find investors to help me. I’m putting out a call, there might be possibilities, but on the other hand, the Hautes Côtes are precisely a region where there’s still quite a bit to do. There are still lots of lands in the Hautes Côtes that aren’t even planted, that are classified in appellation but not planted. And then you can find vineyards at relatively affordable prices, so it’s really part of the things I’d like to try to do and which I’d like to take an interest in in the coming years. Antoine: I’ll cut this excerpt when I publish it. I’ll keep this information for myself, insider trading. Laurent: You have to keep good information confidential. Antoine: No, but it’s an incredible project and indeed this Hautes Côtes classification must be ultra absorbing but at the same time super interesting to try to vinify, parcel by parcel. Laurent: Exactly.
It’s a bit of a dive into history. It’s a dive into the practices that could exist at the time, also tasting, identification.
Laurent: It passionate me, especially when you talk about history. I’m passionate about the history of Burgundy and particularly the history of the Hautes Côtes. So same thing, I don’t want to make a digression that will take us hours and hours but just above L’Étang-Vergy, for the anecdote, there’s a hill called Vergy hill, which gave its name to the village and to the three surrounding villages. On this hill, in the Middle Ages, there was one of the most powerful châteaux of the Kingdom of France with a real local culture. And to the south of the hill there was an abbey, of which only the ruins remain, called Saint-Vivant abbey. It was the monks of Saint-Vivant who, from the twelfth century, received a donation from the duke of Burgundy at the time. We still have the donation deed. It’s very interesting because on this donation deed it’s marked that the duke of Burgundy gives the monks of Saint-Vivant lands and uncultivated wastelands located in Vosne and Flagey. These uncultivated and wastelands and uncultivated, that means it wasn’t cultivated before, it wasn’t vine before. In four hundred years, the monks of Saint-Vivant made of it nothing less than the Romanée-Conti and Romanée Saint-Vivant. So Romanée-Conti and Romanée Saint-Vivant were the possessions of these Saint-Vivant monks whose ruins are four hundred meters as the crow flies from my house. It was my playground when I was a child with all the village children. We’d go play knight in these romantic and passionate ruins. We have quite an extraordinary chance, which is that I don’t remember anymore if it’s in ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, something like that, the land on which these ruins are was for sale. It’s the Domaine de la Romanée Conti that bought back this land and which then formed an association called Saint-Vivant Abbey Association. They decided, of course with the help of the historic monuments, to safeguard this site which was completely in ruins and which was crumbling more and more, which was really completely in peril. They are ruins, but they were ruins, if nothing was done, in a few years it would have become really just a few piles of stones at ground level, there would have been absolutely nothing left. There has been now, since 2000 or so, more than twenty years of work. Safeguarding work, not at all reconstruction work. But work to, in a way, crystallize, freeze in state and protect this site. It’s something that absolutely passionate me. I am, personally, president of the other association that takes care of the Vergy site too, called “La Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie du Pays de Vergy.” We take care of the entire history of the whole site. The old château, there was also a collegiate church above dedicated to Saint-Denis, the abbey… We’re in absolutely intimate relation with the Saint-Vivant abbey association with which we collaborate daily. All this history, all this Burgundy heritage, and this connection and this anchoring to this Burgundy history and the history of the monks and climats, is something that absolutely passionate me. Antoine: I completely understand because it’s an incredible environment. We were talking about it these last days, but to be able to walk in places where two hundred, three hundred, a thousand years ago people did things too. You mentioned earlier being a passer, I think it’s part of that, that when you’re in wine you can have this vision. Laurent: Absolutely. Antoine: Do you have children? Laurent: I have a daughter, named Jeanne.
Is she passionate about wine?
Laurent: Who is passionate about wine, who is twenty-three. As we only have one we always paid great attention not to put pressure on her. We’re owners, Catherine and I, of our company, of our structure. But on the other hand, we recreated it. We managed to buy back the family house but there was a rupture nevertheless somewhere. While I know in some families of my friends, of great Burgundy houses, there’s really a great family culture where from quite young you’re a bit oriented to take over and it’s extremely important to pass to the next generation, with us, since on top of that she was alone, we really didn’t want to put pressure on her. Then ultimately it’s her, around fifteen, sixteen, who one day told us: “But you never talk about…,” we talked about it at home but: “You don’t talk much about the Maison, about the company. Wouldn’t you like me to come work with you later?” We said: “Yes, nothing would please us more than that. We always paid attention precisely not to put pressure on you, but if it comes from you and if you want, of course, nothing will please us more than that.” She oriented herself a bit toward that. For five to six years, that’s really what motivates her. After her baccalaureate she went to a business school. She finished her business school last June. And then she also realized, she did last year, with lockdown helping, she came to work with us for the vinification period at the Édouard Delaunay vat room for a month, during the vinification period. That interested her a lot and she realized she lacked technical baggage. She decided to do a BTS in viticulture/oenology in Beaune, taking after her father in a way. She’s currently in BTS in viticulture/oenology in alternation that she does at a very beautiful Burgundy domaine, with a very good friend named Thibault Liger-Belair in Nuits Saint-Georges who will teach her many things. We’re absolutely thrilled, and her too I believe. Antoine: Magnificent. I have a question I don’t ask everyone but I think it’s really interesting. If you had the chance to meet yourself again in ‘95 when you leave for the first time for the Languedoc and slip yourself a little note, what would you tell young Laurent? Laurent: It’s a really difficult question. Antoine: We have good questions in this podcast. Laurent: I admit I don’t really know, something like: “Good luck.” No, something like: “Go on, believe in your projects, advance, hitch the plow and plow the vine, go on.” Antoine: Very well, the message is passed to that former Laurent. Thanks so much for this time, for this interview. We did a beautiful tour of your story, of your story with you and your wife and then all this family history, of business too and all this Burgundy history to which we paid widespread tribute.
I have three questions left that are traditional in this podcast. The first is, do you have a wine book to recommend to me?
Laurent: So, as I told you, I didn’t have much time to think about the question, but yes, certainly, it’s a book by Jacky Rigaux. Jacky Rigaux is someone I love a lot, who is a great writer and also a great Burgundy academic who is interested in the terroir aspect. He was really the one who theorized what we call in Burgundy geo-sensorial tasting which is so important and which precisely comes back to the fact of tasting through the wine the terroir and the terroir’s characteristics. He was also very interested in vintages, in vintage changes and the succession of vintages in Burgundy because we are in Burgundy in a northern region. As I was telling you earlier, we have a number of grape varieties that’s limited, essentially chardonnay and pinot noir. Ultimately the two variables we have are terroir and its vintages. And as we’re northern, the difference compared to the Languedoc, for example, the difference of vintages from one year to the next expresses itself a bit more here. There are more variations, more gaps. There are a bit fewer now with climate warming than was the case ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, but we really have these vintages that each have a fairly strong personality. Jacky Rigaux wrote a book called, there have been several editions, but it’s: “One hundred years of vintages in Burgundy.” I worked with him, two years ago, for a re-edition in which he included a number of Maison Delaunay vintages. This book is very interesting. I’ll give it to you actually, because I have it. He describes all the vintages according to the versions since 1893 or 1900, depending on editions, by bringing each vintage back into its context, both small geopolitical, social elements, what were the great events happening at that moment, the characteristics of the vintage from a climatic point of view, which is extremely important. Then ultimately the style of wines, the quality of wines of the vintage in question and by completing for each vintage, since he had the chance to be able to do that in several houses and several domaines, by one, two, three tasting comments on wines of the year in question. It’s a book that’s extremely interesting. It’s a reference actually that you have to have in your library. Because for those who have the chance one day to be able to taste a ‘59 or a ‘71, or whatever the vintage, it allows you to dive back into it and see what the characteristics of that year were. It’s something that fascinates me a bit too. I was saying precisely that I was able to taste with him, this will tie in I think with the next question. We did a tasting with Jacky. We tasted maybe twenty old vintages of my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather at the time when I was relaunching Maison Édouard Delaunay. For me, it was an absolutely extraordinary experience. I have the chance to have in my cellar a few old bottles that my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather had kept. We opened a number of them, we went back to 1929. We tasted them all with someone who knows the vintages in question perfectly. It was an absolutely fascinating experience. He selected seven or eight of them which he included in his tasting comments. What fascinates me precisely is that, again for those who have the chance to taste a few old vintages, first Burgundy wines, and pinot noirs in particular, age much better than we might believe. They certainly have less tannins than Bordeaux for example, but they have more acidity. The two preservation factors are tannins and acidity. It ages much better than we might believe. Our luck is that the old bottles we have stayed in the same cellar, without ever travelling. They never moved so they were always kept in good conditions. I’m always fascinated by this time-capsule side of an old wine bottle. When we taste an old vintage, it projects you into another era. We travel through time and that’s where Jacky’s book is very interesting, because he puts back precisely some elements of historical context, the evolution of society that was in the years in question. Ultimately, an old wine bottle is a cru, a vintage, the climatic evolutions of that time, but it’s also a lot of the winemaker’s preoccupations. For sure, when we taste a 1939 we say to ourselves people, in September or October 1939 certainly had many preoccupations on their mind beyond doing the best work possible at the cellar. And I find there’s no other product ultimately that we can consume, it’s almost a communion with the past, with people who disappeared long ago, and which was produced sometimes ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty years ago by people who are both close to us and very far from us. I find that quite fascinating. Antoine: Yes, I totally agree, I was talking about this element not very long ago. Thanks for the book recommendation, and obviously this one I haven’t read. Laurent: I’ll give it to you. Antoine: That’s super kind. I read other books by Jacky Rigaux and it’s true that it’s absolutely incredible work. We were talking with Laure Gasparotto about this temporal dimension of wine tasting and it’s true it’s a crazy thing. I haven’t had the chance to taste many old vintages, maybe three or four, but nothing from 1999. Laurent: Can I ask you a question? What year were you born? Antoine: I was born in ‘96. Laurent: Oh yes, that I don’t have, unfortunately. Antoine: Too bad, I should have tried another year. Laurent: It was during the period when we didn’t produce wine. Antoine: I should have tried another year. I haven’t yet had the chance to taste many old vintages. It’s normal, I think it’ll come, you have to give it time, experience. I think if I had tasted some in the last three years I might not have enjoyed them as much as I’ll enjoy them in the next five. You have to take time and patience too when you’re a taster. It’s super interesting and this timeless dimension, the fact of tasting a year, the fact of tasting the winemaker’s preoccupation. Antoine: Actually it’s what Laure was telling me, she was telling me we sometimes sacralize the fact of making wine but maybe the winemaker at that moment, I don’t know, was sick, or I don’t know, he had something else to do, he had just bought a house and had to renovate it. Laurent: He had problems with his wife, or he had a flat tire on the car. Antoine: He was too long at the cellar, he did things quickly, he left to do something else, and actually it’s fascinating indeed to have the ability to taste a story and a time. You who are passionate about history, that must put you in interesting situations.
Do you have a recent tasting favorite?
Laurent: It’s the one I just talked about, it’s this famous tasting with Jacky of these Maison vintages, so produced by the three generations who preceded me. Exactly when we were relaunching Maison Édouard Delaunay. For me it was an opportunity precisely to dive back into what was the reality, the style, the values of the people who preceded me at Maison Édouard Delaunay. Antoine: Yes, that must have been sublime. Laurent: Ah, it was formidable.
And last question, who is the next person I should interview in this podcast?
Laurent: Jacky Rigaux. Antoine: Perfect. Who already cited Jacky Rigaux to me? I think it was Loïc Pasquet who must have cited him. Ah no, it was Ivan Massonnat, sorry. Laurent: Loïc Pasquet is a disciple of Jacky Rigaux. Antoine: Yes, he’s part of it, clearly. Noted. I believe by the way he’s not very far from here. It’s a good occasion for us to come back to Burgundy. Laurent: He’s in Gevrey-Chambertin. Antoine: We can come back to Burgundy and interview him. Laurent, thanks so much for this interview. It was passionate, I learned plenty of things. Laurent: Thanks so much to you, Antoine. It was very interesting to share all this too. Antoine: And I can’t wait to continue the day together and discover even more what you do here. Laurent: With great pleasure.
