Vosne Romanée, Burgundy.
Taking advantage of a 2-3 day family visit in Burgundy, we found the time to visit Jean-Yves Bizot. My first experience with his wines was in a tasting at Augé last november. His Vosne Romanée 2003 and Echezeaux Grand Cru 2002 were a memorable feast for the palate. He was not very talkative on this frigid and snowy day : 
It was so cold that every vigneron in front of the store had been fit with a brightly colored peruvian earflap hat by forethinking Marc Sibard. But I still could learn from him that these balanced and delicate wines were made out of a very small vineyard surface (2,5 hectare) and through a very simple and non-sophisticated vinification.
This is a balmy warm april day. Jean-Yves Bizot says he is currently doing some replanting to replace dead vines and his employee is busy mowing the grass between the rows [picture lower right : the grass grows fast after the cold winter]. He will plow lightly along the roots some time later. He says there is too much plowing in the vineyard nowadays : The vineyard and the upper layer should be left alone with their own quiet life.
After this introduction, he looks for glasses and opens the blue door to the cellar. The tasting glasses are big, he does not like the 
INAO glasses and says these ones are large and wide enough to let the wine breathe and ventilate.
The vaulted cellar is cool, its walls oozing with dampness in some places. It was built circa 1850 and prior to that, a sophisticated drainage was built to isolate it from the underground water. The main cellar room holds a little less than 2 dozen casks : the 2005 wines. All of them Pinot Noir : Vosne Romanée and Echezeaux. His Echezeaux comes from 3 plots (70 ares altogether).
He says he began working here in 1993. This is a family estate and back then, when his father's sharecropper fell ill, he took charge of the vineyards. But he was initially trained as a geologist (which can be useful in the viticulture) and so he attended oenology studies in Dijon, Burgundy (1991-1992). He actually soon had to "de-learn" many of the things that are taught there. Speaking of geology and of what it brought to him, he says he learned an important thing : in french, "laisser le temps au temps", leave the time to time, or let things settle down. This quiet duration factor matters for the vineyard and for the vinification, like it does for the geological phenomenons.
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