Domaine de Suremain (Burgundy)

The Domaine de Suremain Monthélie, Côte de Beaune (Burgundy)
Monthelie (map)is a small village of the Côte de Beaune. It lies at only 1,5 kilometer from Meursault, which looks like a small town in comparison.
The Domaine de Suremain in Monthélie must not be mistaken for the same-name estate in Mercurey (Côte Chalonnaise) and which belongs to a cousin. This Côte de Beaune winery is a 10,5-hectare family estate with deep generational roots. The name Suremain comes from the French "sure main" or "sure hand" and may have been a proof of an ancestor's craftmanship. Today's owner, Eric de Suremain, took the reins of the estate in 1978 after spending some time in wineries in the United States. The estate makes Rully 1er Cru (white and red), Monthelie red and Monthelie 1er Cru red (plus Marc de Bourgogne & Ratafia).
After a few years, Eric decided in 1996 to fully implement an organic/biodynamic farming-management. Dominique de suremain, his wife, says that when her husband began to work here in 1978, he was using chemical products in the vineyard, but had always kept grass between the rows, using weedkillers only under the vines themselves. One day he was tired of this type of conventional farming and decided to change right away (he didn't begin with trials). Thierry Guyot in St Romain was a reference for Eric de Suremain and he was his counsel when he had doubts in the early years. Eric works in the cellar and in the vineyard, and they use external farm-management companies or individuals (tâcherons) to make the various tasks in the vineyard (because of dissuading laws and costs in hiring) and they have only two permanent staff who can work both in the cellar side and in the vineyard.

The Vatroom at Domaine de SuremainOur guest Dominique de Suremain shows us first the vatroom where lots of wooden tranconnic opent vats can be seen, all made by Grenier again. She says that many were old vats that were renovated by Grenier and she adds (we knew that already) that he doesn't alas has time now to renovate old vats, so they will buy him some of his vats fitted with stainless-steel openings and lid. Right now, there are 10 open wooden vats in this vatroom, plus 3 other in the next vatroom, which is under repair. Sizes vary, the biggest. They have too vertical, traditional presses [picture above - in the background]. For a few years, they worked with a pneumatic press that they bought in 2009 and then Eric decided to sell it and buy this vertical presses. He credits them for being much softer on the grapes, another thing being also that with the pneumatic press they had, the rebêchage (when the press sets by itself the stirring of the solid elements of the grapes and re-press them) was automatic, leaving at the end only almost dry grape shells. With the vertical press, it's easier to do exactly what you want. Of course, it is manual-work consuming, especially to empty it with forks, the chapeau, the hardened pressed-grapes being dense and tough. Also, the good thing with the vertical press she says, is that the juice gets somehow filtered through the solid parts, yielding much less lees, so the juice is clearer. Asked if the lees are not a desirable thing for the wine, she says that some lees are good, but on some years the lees being so-and-so, this system gives them more choice and adaptability. And on the whole, the lees are thinner and yield better results. They don't devote the presses for whites and reds and both can press both colors, it depends of which grapes and volumes are brought in. The ancient opening designed to pour the clustersWalking into the adjacent vatroom, which is a very old part of the winery, we marvel at this small opening above our heads, there are several of them in this room. That's where in the 18th century the clusters were poured directly into each of the open wooden vats underneath after the harvest. Simple and beautiful stones, testimony of the history of the place and of the region. They're not used anymore today.
Red grapes are usually 100% destemmed, and on exceptionnal years like 2005 for example they may put 20% to 30% of whole clusters. They use a vibrating sorting-table since 2008 because there was such a strong push of mildew in the vineyard that they had to sort and throw away lots of damaged grapes. They won't use this table every year but this year it was very useful. They began as every year by a vineyard of theirs which is always ripe first, their Rully Les Préaux Pinot Noir. Then usually, they go on with the whites, which follow in ripeness order, but on some years like in 2007, they actually ended with the whites. There's no fixed schema in the order, they taste, taste again, and make some analysis, three weeks before the supposed harvest date and in each vineyard block.Timeless scene on the side of the vatroomIn the adjacent vatroom being undr repair, three other Grenier wooden vats are covered with plastic sheets for protection, including the last one delivered by the cooperage, the biggest of this winery to this day. It has a 30-cask capacity, or 6840-liter, at 228-liter per cask. It was a hard job to haul it inside because it is heavy and massive. Dominique de Suremain says that they have four main cuvées, Rully 1er Cru white, Rully 1er Cru red, Monthelie Village and Monthelie 1er Cru. They still need many open vats because they harvest separately, not necessarily block by block, but by group of blocks among their 10,5-hectare surface, and they take into account the respective maturity of each plot. Mrs Dominique de Suremain in one of the galleries of the cask-cellarDominique was not originally from the region and she had little knowledge about wine or wineries before meeting her future husband Eric de Suremain, but his passionate nature helped in the transmission of his know-how. She learned everything from the work in the vineyard to the vatroom and cellar tasks. They hadn't any employee then and Eric's father and grandfather were helping in the vineyards. She doesn't work in the vineyard herself anymore but got a good understanding of the whole vineyard-management and vinification process. We visit with her the cask cellar, a nice, vaulted twin cellar composed of two galleries holding about 40 casks each. We walked down a few very old steps to reach it but at the other end a small window opens on the landscape facing Monthelie, because the winery sits at the edge of the slope bordering the village. Mostly reds in these casks : of the 10,5-hectare total surface, 8 hectares are planted with Pinot Noir. Since 2006 they have another 1er Cru in Monthelie. They had_and still have_ 3 hectates of Monthelie 1er Cru Sur la Velle, plus 3 hectares of Monthelie-Villages where some vineyard blocks were upgraded in 1er Cru. So, they decided to downgrade themselves some of the 1er Cru vineyards and keep vinify them with the Villages-wines to keep a good level for their Monthelie-Villages. And their remaining Monthelie 1er Cru is actually a plot that has been upgraded from the Villages Appellation in 2006. Anyway each plot is vinified separately and blended if necessary only at the end of the elevage. View on a cask gallery at Domaine de SuremainThe temperature is 4° C in the cask cellar, which is quite cold and caused by the fact that it is partly underground. This ancient cellar has a trap-door opening through the thick vault,that's where the juice is poured by gravity into the casks. The other way around, they use a small pump for racking. the wines in the casks are resting these days, it is winter, it is cold and there's a pause in the remaining fermentations. They also use some of the big-capacity Grenier wooden-vats (4 or 5 of them) upstairs for the elevage, both for the whites and the reds, which means that they use less casks than they used to in the past. Dominique says that it didn't change that much the style of their wines, it just brought more freshness in the wines. The elevage is quite long, last december for example they racked the 2007 whites but the 2007 reds are still in the casks or wooden-vats, and they should be racked around next march (2009). On average, the elevage of the wines at Domaine de Suremain lasts 15 to 20 months depending of the vintage. Speaking of the 2008 wines which are in this cellar (the 2007 are in a separate cellar), right now they mostly don't even have to top up the casks like they did in autumn, but when the wheather will get warmer and raise the temperature of the cellar, they'll open the small window at the other end, the doors, the trap door, and as a result they will have to sip some wine away because with the temperature raise, the wine will expand out of the cask. Monthelie 1er Cru Sur la Velle : the Suremain vineyards are below the small constructionWe then go back to the surface where a bright winter sun is shining and making the cold outside temperature more bearable. After a few minutes warming up under the sun we go down again in another cellar in a different side of the Chateau. Beautiful stairs again, with the hard stone of the steps being worn-out like church steps. A Saint-Vincent wooden statue stands on the side of the stairway. As we head to the bottle cellar [picture on left] Dominique says that they bought a bottler line through a CUMA that they set up with 3 other wineries. The CUMA system is some sort of coop system that allows the French farmers and vignerons to group themselves to buy expensive machines and share the costs. It's much more cost-efficient than buying one just for the winery when the estate is relatively small and there's a counter system thanks to which they pay the CUMA back only in proportion of the number of bottles that they handled with the machine, so that the bigger wineries in this group of four pay more than the smaller ones.
We arrive in a vaulted cellar with massive walls of label-less bottles continuing their elevage there. Beautiful place.
About the picture above, which was shot a couple hundreds meters from Monthelie, the Domaine-de-Suremain Sur la Velle 1er Cru climat lies just below the vineyard building (also owned by Suremain). Above the building, on the right and on the left, lie the Clou des Chênes, the climat that was recently upgraded from Villages Appellation to 1er Cru. It is also owned by Domaine de Suremain. You'll find additional information about these Monthelie climats on this Monthelie page. Another view of Sur la Velle (in the far), the walled Clos les Champs-Fulliot 1er Cru in the foreground (right)We now taste a few wines.
__Domaine de Suremain Monthelie Villages 2006. For sale since november. A blend from several climats : Rou Magnien, les Barbières and les Riottes (now named les Hauts Bruns), a now-1er-Cru that they still vinify as a Villages. The wine is as cold as the cellar and we try to warm the glass with our hands which are themselves frozen... Fruity Pinot Noir. Nice mouth in spite of the temperature that makes the tannins more present than they should. Public price 13,5 Euro.
__Domaine de Suremain Monthelie 1er Cru Sur la Velle 2006. Nice aromatic complexity on the nose. The cold makes its opening sluggish. But very, very nice in the mouth after a moment. B. notes the finesse and the good lengh, plus the retro-olfaction with cherry notes. This year, in 2008 she says, they brought in only half of the usual harvest volume because of the damaged grapes.
__Domaine de Suremain Monthelie Villages 2005. Bottled in may 2007. Intense red, this Pinot Noir 2005 has some substance. Clove aromas, eucalyptus, spices. Ripe fruits, crushed fruits. I find the mouth less expressive in comparison, but B. notes the nice unwinding in the mouth and the silkyness. Same price as the 2006 (13,5 Euro).
__Domaine de Suremain Monthelie 1er Cru Sur la Velle 2005. Complexity and intensity. Red fruits, many aromas that the cold prevents from being fully enjoyed. More tannins than in 2006, more structure also. Nice, but this should be tasted again in 8 to 10 years, and why not 20 years, it should make it... The 2005, 2007 and 2008 vintages were pretty similar she says, with a beautiful late season. Monthelie : view on the vineyards from the church's cemeteryEric & Dominique de Suremain have three children.
Domaine de Suremain exports 40% to 50% of its wine, for example to the United States through Wine Without Borders and to Japan (Nouvelles Selections) through the Maison Lou Dumont in Burgundy.Eric de Suremain, pictured in july.................... Domaine Eric de SuremainChateau de Monthelie21190 Montheliephone : +33 3 80 21 23 32fax : +33 3 80 21 66 37email : desuremain[at]wanadoo[dot]fr <

Comments

[Phil]

Another excellent reportage about the lesser known Monthélie appelation. I'll try to stop there on my next trip. Keep up the good work, I look forward to your next posting.

[Steve L.]

Have you ever encountered such a cold (39 degrees Fahrenheit) cellar before?

[Bertrand]

Yes, Steve (hello! btw, I'm thinking to enquire about the question you asked me before, just a bit busy these days...), I've been in quite a few similarly cold cellars before (in winter, that is). Some non-interventionist vignerons like the "cooling-down" and rest that winter brings upon wines, and they even sometimes open the traps, doors to bring the temp further down than what it would be normally (sometimes for the purpose to postpone the malolactic fermentation). Plus, many vignerons have cellars that are not that deep-dug and the temperature gets naturally colder in winter than it should (winter is particularly cold this winter). Many consider that their wine being alive, it can stands this stand-still stage and it will move again when temperatures get higher further in the season.

[Szymon]

Dear Bertrand,

i have fresh memories from Domaine de Suremain as I was there today ;-)

Mmme Suremain is doing very well, I had some testing in the cellar from 1746. I must admit that I found her 2002 Rully 1er Cru Preaux the best wine I tasted today. Very well ballanced, delicate and with a powerful red fruit nose. I also bought 2 bottles of great Monthelie, 2005 and 2006. It is great to find your story here! Regards,

Szymon