Guy Bussière, Val de Saone (Burgundy)

Guy Bussière in front of his house Bonnencontre, Burgundy
The region of Bonnencontre, Broin and Auvillars in the Saone valley, east of Beaune, is usually not known by wine amateurs. Of course, it is at a distance from the famed Côte where the prestigious wines of Burgundy are made, but the slopes along the Saone river near this string of villages have been in ancient times the craddle of the famed Melon de Bourgogne, a grape variety which has been since then estranged to the distant western Loire where it makes up the single variety behind the Muscadet. There was a time when Melon de Bourgogne was very widespread in Burgundy, and particularly near these 3 villages. When you look at the Treaty of Ampelography directed by P. Viala & V Vermorel in 1905, you find pages on the Melon written by E. Durand and P Pacottet which states that Melon de Bourgogne was indeed very widespread in the past, to such an extent that on december 1st 1567, Philippe II, King of Spain and Count of Burgundy, signed an edict to forbid further plantings of Gamez (Gamay) and Melons in the region. You read in this scientific treaty that the monks of the area feared that the overproduction of Melon in the area could theaten the sale of their Pinot wines, and they lobbied to limit its plantings and sale, in addition to checking that no Pinot Noir or Chardonnay was grown on these vulgar lands. The parliaments of Burgundy and Franche-Comté ordered the destruction of Melon vines from the year 1700 to 1731, and smart vignerons just changed the name of the variety growing in their plot to avoid uprooting. Regognizing a variety is already hard for a man of the trade, and the bureaucracy henchmen didn't see the trick.
But Guy Bussière says that the fact that centuries ago, the clergy and the rulers forbad local people to grow "noble" varieties like Pinot Noir & Chardonnay and further obliged them to destruct Melon, this all let deep scars in the local psyche, and people around here still deny the possibility to make good wine on their own slopes, without realizing that this mindset was sowed long before they express this opinion.
The Treaty of Ampelography of 1905 says that the Melon made up a total of 40 000 hectares (of which 15 000 in the Western Loire), scattered in different regions at about the same latitude from Dijon to Angers : First in the Saone valley and the Dheune basin, in Chagny, but also in the Yonne and the Aube, in the Doubs (Besançon, Montbéliard, Misserey, Haute-Saone (Gy and Gray), Lons-le-Saulnier, in the Bourbonnais, the Allier, the Lyonnais, the Lorraine, near Paris (Argenteuil, Villeneuve-Saint-Georges), and the Anjou (where it's named Muscadet) and Touraine (Cholet, Champtoceaux, Saint-Florent-le-vieil, Montevrault, Ancenis, Beaugeois, with Issoudun beings its southern-most implantation.
Follows a comparative ampelography where you read that it's in the Saone valley, from Ecuelle to Glanon that the Melon finds its best expression. Melon was viewed as a thirst wine, compared to more prestigious varieties. The Melon is a productive variety, that's why there were some fears about overproduction, the old books tell of yields of 1 to 2 barrels per ouvrée, which translates into 50 to 100 hectoliters/hectare. When Melon was worth 50 to 100 Francs per 228-liter barrel, the Chardonnay reached 500 to 1000 Francs, which helps visualize the status gap at the time.

A vineyard on the slope When Guy Bussiére settled here to retire (he didn't work in the wine field most of his life), he didn't intend intially to make wine for a living. He was born in the next village near Bonnencontre and his father was making wine from about 2 hectares of vineyards, living also from his distillery activity (he was a "bouilleur de cru", distilling other people's alcohol). His grandfather also had made wine, on a small scale for his family, from a small surface that hey kept for himself (see Guy Bussière pictured in the vineyard plot of his grandfather, above right, with the Chateau de Broin in the background). When Guy Bussière came back in the region after a life elsewhere in France, he just wanted to revive a bit this tradition and also make wine for himself, especially that he had been used all his life to drink his father's wine which had virtually no sulphur and which he drank more easily than the wines found in the retail.
His father had begun planting vineyards around here when he himself settled here, in 1940. (Guy Bussière is born in 1942). He would sell his wine in bottles, but all to people he knew in the vicinity, without labels on the bottles, as it was still allowed at this time for small-scale production.
Guy Bussière drives me in his Renault 4L along the Saone slopes (satellite view of the 1st block we visited)c, and says that there were 10 kilometers of vineyards along the river in the past, say in the 19th century. At a time when the railways hadn't yet services cities like Beaune, the main, reliable way of transportation was the river and the canals. The Saone which flows maybe 500 meters from the slope was an ideal freeway to have the wines delivered to major destinations, and if these Saone coteaux weren't prestigious, they still produces lots of Melon wines which were the everyday drink of many people in the area. The cadastral names also prove the old roots of the vineyards here, as one parcel is named les Vignottes. In the peak era, there were some 500 hectares of vineyards in the Val de Saone. New plantings of Melon de Bourgogne Guy Bussière bought back very small slices of vineyards, a few rows at a time, from old owners or inheritants who didn't have the time or the will to continue working with these vines. He shows me a one-hectare block which is a total of 20 to 25 small individual parcels. We can say that he arrived at the good time to help revive this Val de Saone vineyard because apart from the couple of hectares he's now working on, everything has disappeared. From the 10 kilometers of vineyards more or less parrallel to the river in that area, there's almost nothing left, and few people in the residents of this region even know wine was a major thing here in the past, when the village of Broin for example had some 80 hectares of vineyard by itself. The woods have even taken over some vineyards and I had to see it by myself to believe it : very high, thick trees with vines growing along them, up to maybe 15 meters or more. Now I understand that a vine is indeed a creeper plant, like the one in the jungle... You fall upon a forest, here in Burgundy, and when you look from close, you see vines climbing along the tree foliage, looking for the light, amazing...
Guy Bussière has been replanting some Melon de Bourgogne last april (pic above) in order to augment his production with this variety. This new planting makes up about 30 ares. This was 100 % Melon country here before the phyloxera, all around, except for the nearby village of Auvillard where there was some Chardonnay too. The Melon was still wine. The soil here is clay only, there's no limestone says Guy Bussière, so it's very different from the Côte. This had a consequence for the replanting after the phylloxera, because you need to choose the proper (American) rootstock, suited for the type of soil, and the experience of the Côte couldn't help here because the soil was so different. They found the right American rootstock, the Riparia, to grow their vines again, but it's still a mystery how they made their selection and choice. The region had less support than the Côte and was poorer and it's hard to guess who pointed to the right rootstock at that time. Another parcel surrounded with woods As said above, the region had suffered long time ago from edicts forbidding the planting of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and this sounds by the way very similar, at least in the emotion side of the issue, with the present-day edicts of the wine-Appellations authorities concerning what can and cannot be grown, and our modern rebels on this question certainly had their equivalent in this distant past. What Guy Bussière told me is that his father, who came in the region circa 1939-1940, was the first to dare plant the varieties that had been forbidden a few centuries ago, a selective prohibition that somehow people had been keeping respecting well into the 20th century, in spite of the lack of any modern law probiting the planting of Pinot Noir or Chardonnay on these Saone slopes... It's strange how we're sometimes unwittingly molded by things that were enforced centuries ago. Thinking again to this era in the 1500s' when the monks asked for authority policing in the plantings issue, it's true that these slopes were indeed very close from the Abbaye de Citeaux, just imagine, some 5 kilometers away (check this map, and from the Abbey, take the road D966 and D12A south, and you reach Bonnencontre). I understand that any common lay people making wine in their vicinity must have irritated the noble vintners and ignited some retaliation.
The pic above was shot in the second block of vineyards owned by Guy Bussière. It's a bit further from the first ones, and these ones are quite surrounded by woods, most being former vineyards turned back to wilderness. View the satellite view of these vineyards, which are divided in two parts separated by fallow land.
The work on the ground consists in two plowings to cut off the grass and a second plow to move back the earth (décavaillonage). Another view of the second block Another interesting thing is that the Melon de bourgogne which is at home here, is never found elsewhere in Burgundy, and for a reason : Elsewhere in Burgundy it's limestone country, while here there's no limestone, and the Melon de Bourgogne doesn't like limestone, it's happy on the type of heavy, wet clay that you find on these mild slopes going down to the Saone river. Guy Bussière says that whenever you find Melon-de-Bourgogne well implanted, you find some soil more or less similar to here, like some places in Vezelay where it still can be found. There's also some Melon in Jura, but in Jura what is called Melon is actually Chardonnay. the question of variety names is indeed quite complicated, especially if you add that in a remote past the growers would change the name of the variety to hide its existence from the Appellation clergy authorities...
The vineyard is managed organicly, using only sulphur and copper (Bordeaux mixture).Were in the midst of this second block when Guy tells me about the sprayings this year. 2011 has been very dry and healthy, and these old vines here got only 2 sprayings, the last being in july, when "normal" years he does 6 or 7 sprayings in total. 2010 was very rainy and he had to make many preventive sprayings against mildew. He uses a back sprayer and does it on foot. Guy Bussière has also turned his vineyard on Biodynamy since 1999.
An interesting thing said by Guy Bussière sheds light on the way people made their wines in the 19th century or in the early 20th : He has old vines in the block pictures at the top of this story, where Aligoté and Melon-de-Bourgogne are complanted, alternating 2 rows of Aligoté with 1 row of Melon, and this for a reason : it is because they liked this proportion in the wine, so they just planted according to this proportion and harvested the whole thing together, to be sure that in a given vat you'd get roughly the 2 for 1 ratio.... Quite smart, that a blend made in the rows.... Now, he says, as he wants to vinify these varieties separately, he has to make sure that he harvests the rows in the right order.
The vines are 40 to 45 years old on average. Some being 10 years old, some 40, and some 90 years like the ones on both sides, in a plot split between Aligoté and Gamay (I think that the ones here are Aligoté). Usually, the white varieties are planted on the upper side of the slope because the soil is more acidic and it suits more to the whites. Guy Bussière in his chai Most of Guy Bussière's whites are bottled as Vin de France (the new name for Vin de Table). For the red Pinot Noir, as he wanted to keep printing the variety name, he preferred to use the Vin de Pays Appellation because under the Table Wine label he couldn't print Pinot Noir openly. But the problem at the agreement commissions is that the tasters are used to wines with generous SO2 addings and they aren't prepared for wines without SO2, they just taste so different. It's not only a question of possible fizzy feel, but also the color, as the corrected wines are very brilliant and well-behaved in terms of color while the SO2-free wines may not be always perfect in that regard. Guy Bussière didn't make his wines as Table Wine from the beginning. He followed the usual process of bringing his wine at his own expenses to pass the agreement and one day he had this Chardonnay which had been moving slowly and seemed to never finish to ferment. He tried to bring samples for the agreement and was told, no way you can't present your wine in these conditions. So he just gave up and decided to, as he likes to say, upgrade his wine as Vin-de-Table (people usually say downgrade)... After the first thrill about being left in the cold, he had this growing customer base of people who buy the wines not because of the supposedly-upper labelling but because of what they loved in his wines. And this type of consumer keeps growing in number, so the labelling issue is not very important. A Grenier open-top vat His local customers are very seldom, he doesn't sell 100 bottles around here, he hasn't a customer per months from around here who walks in the courtyard of the winery looking for wine. I find this amazing, and it says a lot, either about the prejudice against non-conventional wine in the deep country, or about the self-denying opinion of the Saone-valley people concerning their own wine. The Mairie (City Hall) of Bonnencontre, he admits, buys some of his wine, which he appreciates, because other elected councils of other villages around don't show interest in his local production. Guy Bussière says he'd dream that a small city like Seurre along the Saone river would buy his wines, because it's a port city along the Saone and there are many people including foreigners (who aren't molded on the Appellation issue) who pass through it.
The chai is a former cowshed, but it has turned into a winery without a problem, and you can still see the metal rings along the wall to tie the cows at their spot. The yeast ambiance came with the various tools and containers which he bought from around here. He just had a concrete slab poured on the ground because the bricks of the ground were soaked with cow pee, which was not the best environment for winemaking. The cask cellar The cask cellar is an authentic cellar, proving that the people who built this farm were themselves making wine. It's underground for the most part, with a plain earth ground. When it rains real hard and long, some water passes through the cellar (and goes out at the other end), but the casks are at a distance from the ground and the humidity is not a problem for the wine. This farm was his grandfather's farm, but it had a longer history before him, and Guy Bussière can only guess what people did exactly in this cellar at the origin. The size of the cellar, he says, mean real business in winemaking, not just a couple of barrels for the family consumption.
Guy Bussière's casks are 5 to 20 years old. He isn't looking for wood imprint, especially that as he vinifies whole-clustered, he doesn't want to add more tannins with wine... The harvest wood boxes Guy shows me in an open barn along his house the boxes that he uses for picking, they're all in wood, and the ones piled behind him are the ones that his father used for his own grapes in the 1940s'. He may be the only remaining vigneron using wood boxes in Burgundy at harvest, this is really something you will have a hard time to find elsewhere. They're more than 50 years old and made in poplar wood. The ones on the front are more recent ones, he had them made a few years ago. The vertical press in the back is one of the two such presses that he used until 2 years ago, when he bought an horizontal press. He doesn't know yet if the change is a good thing or not on the wines. He discussed lenghtly about the issue with Nicolas Luquet who until recently worked with Philippe Pacalet, and Nicolas told him that to his surprise the horizontal press makes a very good job on the wines and that the vertical press is in that regards easily replaceable by the larger horizontal press. He still keeps wondering if this judgment is valid for the whites and he'll keep checking that. The distiller Guy Bussière then shows me in the same open barn the alambic which he'll use very soon to distil the fermented marc. As said above, his father was distilling alcohol for a living along with making wine, and he's keeping the activity, not only for his own fermented pomace but occasionally for people who want to make fruit alcohol. When in use, the container on the right is put atop the wooden stool. This type of alambic is one of the rare ones with which you can distill in one go, when others need to do it in two consecutive distillations. This way, he keeps more aroma, particularly with the distillation of fruits. It's all in copper, even if the black appearance may hint otherwise. Fermenting pomace The pomace, which is the mass of pressed clusters, complete with the seeds and stems, were still fermenting in large plastic containers when I visited. Guy Bussière works the old way, putting a layer of clay at the surface of the pomace to keep the mass from going over the top. There's a plastic sheet inbetween the pomace and the clay but in the past therewas no plastic and the clay would actually replace what the plastic is doing today, people would put fine clay which left no air pass at all. He keeps using the clay because there's the weight which prevents the pomace to overflow when it's in full-blown fermentation, and also it has an inertia effect on the temperature. In the past, they would put a layer of large leaves of Noah (an hybrid variety with large leaves) before putting the air-tight clay, to prevent spoiling the pomace. I saw 5 or 6 such plastic containers in the barn, waiting to be distilled. He sells the alcohol under the name of "Brut D'Alambic at 21,5 € a bottle. You can see in the back the wood which he uses for the alambic. People who bring fruits to distill also bring their wood along, like I witnessed at this artisanal bouilleur de cru elsewhere in Burgundy. Vatroom corner Typically, befor harvest time, he would prepare his open vat, the Grenier or the other one, by watering it to make it tight again. The previous season, he had just let it dry on its own, without using anything else, he says that it's the best preservative. He begins with making a pied de cuve, that is he puts only 30 centimeters high of grapes which he stomps with his feet, and the next day, it's all fermenting thanks to the dried yeasts which remained stuck on the wood surface of the inside of the open-top vat. It's by the way in the wood that he first spots the bubbling of the fermentation. He thinks that the yeasts doing the job are more the ambiance yeasts (the yeasts present in the chai and wooden vat) than the ones present on the grapes skin. He makes mostly the Pinot Noir in this vat, the Gamay being made as rosé.
When the open-top wooden tronconic vat is filled, he leaves the grapes untouched for 4 days (without plastic because there's CO2) after which he begins to stomp with the feet. Depending of the outside temp, he stomps either slowly or faster to balance the work of the yeasts. He works without cooling system in the vat. The fermentation lasts some 15 days. At the end, he puts a plastic sheet when CO2 gets rarer, to prevent insects to pullulate. He used to put some SO2 at this stage, but he stopped as he noticed that by abstaining it changed for the best the way the tannins were expressing themselves. He was very surprised in that regard, the tannins are way more supple without SO2 adding. He knew that for the aromas it would be good, but he didn't expect this result on the tannins. Pinot Noir from the Val de Saone He then presses the must and blends the two juices. Then by gravity (there's a hole in the ground, he fills the casks with the lees and leaves them until the next year (one month before the following harvest). It's all bottled manually, unfiltered & unfined (and SO2 free). He still may add a bit of SO2 for the Chardonnay, like in 2010 at the beginning of august. He think it'll be better to do it by the way a little earlier, decidibg to do it or not by smellin & tasting the wine, in april for example.
For the whites, he brings the horizontal press (non-pneumatic) in the chai (in the past he would have brought the two vertical presses) and presses the whole-clustered grapes in there. He doesnt make rebêchage (untighting and tighting again the press) so as to prevent bad things to come in the wine, the few liters he would get by going through it being not worth the risk. The Aligoté goes into a stainless-steel vat (because he has a shortage of wooden containers). The Chardonnay is stored in a few casks (2nd pic above) in the vatroom, thus in the surface room, not in the cellar like the red. Since a few years he changed the way he works on the Chard. After 2003 he had had problems with reduction in whites and it appeared that it came from the fact that after 2003 Oïdium affected all the vineyards, obliging him to spray more sulphur on the vines. To prevent any remaining sumphur to stay with the wine, he lets the Chard ferment in stainless-steel and puts it in the casks afterward, leaving the gross lees apart because that's where traces of sulphur can be found. THese traces are responsible for these reduction problems. Pouring some Melon Tasting the wines :
__ Guy Bussière Phénix, Melon 2010. Just arriving on the market, bottled in the last days of august. Very aromatic on the nose, even a striking minerality feel, I would say, even though there aren't stones of any sort in this terroir. Surprising. Made with the whole Melon-de-Bourgogne found on his vineyards. There something like candy, either English candy or caramel in the aromas. Guy Bussière says that it's not yet in its full expression, even though it's getting better every day. Costs 6,7 € tax included at the winery.
Speaking of the Melon-de-Bourgogne 2011, everything went smoothly and rapidly, so it could be ready for the market earlier. This seems to be a very easy vintage.
__ Guy Bussière Aligoté old vines (Cuvée Vieilles Vignes) 2009. Vin de France (table wine). Fresh wine, nice one. The mouth is rounder compared with the Melon, good balance between the vividness and the gliding feel in the mouth and throat. It's a small-volume wine, only one cask (300 bottles). Costs 6,35 €. Great value, why don't we drink more Aligoté. What saved this old vineyard of Aligoté is that he found a good market for these wines in Japan a few years ago, and the demand encouraged him to keep making a separate cuvée for these old vines. At the time, 20 % of all his wines were exported to Japan (Oeno-Connexion).
__ Guy Bussière Gamay rosé "La Vie en Rosé" Vieilles Vignes 2008, Vin de Pays. A very pleasant rosé, with rose petals aromas and roundness, a gastronomy rosé obviously but which goes well also alone. Atypical rosé wine, with good length in the mouth. Costs 7,8 €, a bargain. He says that earlier, in summer, it wasn't that pleasant and it's now finding its own way and expression.
__ Guy Bussière Pinot Noir 2009. Vin de Pays. This is the 1st year where he made in parallel a vat with a bit of SO2 and another one without any, considering that the added amount is so small that 15 days after it if he makes an analysis, there will be no trace of it. The grapes were exactly the same, everything was otherwise the same, but the result was so different, particularly on the aromas and the tannins feel, that it's obvious that even if it disappears after a while, the SO2 has a negatiove impact on the quality of the wine. So next year he'll abstain from using any. As a result, the Pinot Noir 2009 without SO2 is already sold out, and he put on the market the one which saw some adding a bit later, but the harsher tannins rebuked the people until this summer when it finally turned better.
Nose of small red fruits, with pepper in the foreground. Pleasant wine with walnut notes. He makes lower yields since a few years, like 30 hectoliters/hectare.
__ Guy Bussière Pinot Noir 2007 Vin de Pays de Sainte Marie de la Blanche. The administration imposed him this Vin-de-Pays sector where most wines are awful, when he would have liked Vin de Pays du Val de Saone. And the fonctionnaire didn't even want to accept his demand for a Vin de Pays label, they wanted him to have his Pinot Noir labelled as Table Wine. He had to sue and hire a lawyer to force the administration to accept the Vin de Pays labelling (he could use some existing Appellation laws which proved that he was in his own right).
__ Guy Bussière Pinot Noir 2008, Vin de Pays. Not on the market yet, the tannins are only beginning to step down. The tannins while still noticeable, are OK, especially that we're tasting it at a cool temp. Aromas of faded flowers. He barely begins to mùarket it, it will be really proposed openly next spring, when the aromaticrange will be wider. This is a long-laying wine, for sure, he noticed this from the start.

At one point in the cellar Guy Bussière showed me a bottle of German natural wine that he discovered by coincidence : the village of Bonnencontre is connected with a twin village in Germany and it happens that it's where one of the rare natural-wine vintners works. The wine is amazingly fresh and pleasant, Guy Bussière says, and it's one of the rare German wines he can stand, the others being usually high on SO2. The wine is a Mosel Riesling 2009 by Hofgut Falkenstein. I really need to know the German wines.

Guy Bussière exports 40 % of his wines. In Paris he sells mostly through Le Vin En Tête, a major player in the natural wine retail in the Capital. He also sells through other cavistes in Paris but he isn't trying hard to find new customers, they come by themselves.
Export : United States (Andrew Bishop OZ Wine - Massachusetts), Denmark (Hvirvel Vin), Japan with eno-connexion, but he didn't sell much there lately, and also Hideaki Kito, a caviste in Nagoya. There's also All Wine in Luxemburg

Guy Bussière Domaine du Val de Saone 9 Grand Rue 21250 Bonnencontre phone + 33 3 80 36 36 62 guy [dot] bussiere [at] wanadoo [dot] fr www.guybussiere.fr

Phénix, the Melon-de-Bourgogne cuvée Edit : We opened recently this bottle that I bought at the winery. This was an enjoyable experience. The turbid wine has a nice tempting color and aspect. Gets down pleasantly and if the mouth is not long, it makes you feel good like wines made very naturally can. I understand why the monks of the Abbaye de Citeaux could see a competition risk for their own production.

Comments

[Piet De Bruyn]

Dear Bertrand,
I have been reading your articles since a long time and I really appreciate your high-level info. I hope you will keep on publishing. May I ask you if you know good farmer-wine makers who would be willing to learn me the tricks of excellent wine making during a few weeks (intensive), of course I will help them for free from dawn till evening. Is there a kind of website in France for "internships" (stage). FYI: I am an active 53 year old male...and I have my own tiny micro vineyard (120 plants Pinot Gris/Chardonnay and Johanniter) in Flanders (Belgium). Best regards. Piet.

[Bertrand]

Hi Piet,

Thank you, for your comment;
I haven't inquired about possible winemakers who could accept you as trainee. I think that you need to meet wine-farmers in person (this could be in wine fairs here and there) and convince them, there is no reason one would not accept benevolent help from someone who has already some experience in the trade. The main thing is also maybe to make them confident that you take care of your own accommodation during the time of your training (it helps them feel comfortable about the idea of having you helping in the winery). Many of them speak English at a certain level at least, so that could be feasible to ask them yourself (in the case you're not speaking French).

Hope this answer is of any help and can induce you at daring ask

[Piet De Bruyn]

Hello again Bertrand,
Thanks for your answer. You’re right, direct contact is the best, good idea about the wine fairs. Speaking French fluently, “le jargon oenologique” won’t be a problem.