Dominique Derain (Burgundy)

Dominique Derain in his chai Saint Aubin, Côte de Beaune (Burgundy)
In spite of a vineyard surface of about 5 hectares, which is small even by Burgundy standards, Dominique Derain's wines have shined well beyond the quiet village of Saint Aubin, in the Côte de Beaune. Like I noticed after tasting his wines at a Bourgogne-wines tasting in Paris a couple years ago [5th picture on this story], Dominique Derain is a joyful man who doesn't take himself seriously, and his wines were particularly exciting and enjoyable. Here is a father of 5 (with 3 wives) whose career has been bumpy until he settled in his own winery and produced uncorrected wines with little or no sulfur that made him known by demanding wine amateurs scattered throughout the world. His rebelness in his highschool years made him hop from school to school in Dijon (Saint Jo, Saint François, Saint Bénigne), and he ended up joining the work force early to enrol at a local cooperage (Meyer) which has closed down since. He then worked for 10 years in different wineries in Puligny, in Meursault (Ropiteau), in Alsace and also at Domaine Laroche in Chablis. He then created this estate with his then-wife Catherine whom he met at the wine school in Beaune. They separated 6 years ago but they still share the facility. When they worked together she was more on the vineyard-management side and he was dealing with the chai and cellar side. The estate's surface began with a mere 12 ares in 1988, then they planted some Saint-Aubin Village white, then purchased 1,3 hectare of Saint-Aubin (red and white), which made a total of 2,8 hectares. after that they planted 70 ares of Remilly. They also sold some of the surface at times because the banks didn't follow up : they were thinking their yields would be 40 or 50 hectilter/hectare like it's usual around here but they never reached these yields and the banks got tired. But they managed to sell these plots to friendly third-parties to whom they would rent the parcels, thus keeping working on them.

Dominique Derain's wine farm Saint Aubin is a very quiet village on the slope (Côte de Beaune means something like the slopes of Beaune] with view on the vineyards in the far, topped by their hairy Hauts de Côte (the wooded top-of-the-hill unfit for vineyard growing). The place has not been frozen into a tourist trap or wine pilgrimage spot, there doesn't seem to be an urban-facelift project here, the street buildings look authentic and you sigh with relief at the lack of street furniture, signs and anti-parking posts that have turned many European towns and villages into soulless museums.
46 rue des Perrières, the estate's address, is right under the church along a street running downhill, it's a farm with a deep, open courtyard (the one with the red shutters) which would make a bigger winery feel a bit squeezed but it has the right volume for Dominique's business. Keeping making wine in the center of villages nowadays is more and more difficult for practical reasons as the buildings were originally intended for farmers working on small surfaces without modern machinery, but vintners like him work in many regards in such a simple manner that if their surface is reasonable they still can unfold their wings in there and work comfortably enough, given they can pour a concrete slab for hygiene and make some arrangements.
Working in a cooperage in his early years were not Dominique Derain's first steps in the wine trade : since he was a child he had been helping his father-side grandfather who was living in Saint Denis de Vaux in the vallée des Vaux, a little-known corner of the Côte Chalonnaise near Mercurey. The Vallée des Vaux is a valley with nice villages, a few vineyards and thick chestnut forests. When Dominique speaks about his mother-side grandpa Auguste Raquillet (who lived in Mercurey), he suddenly rolls his r's, and I remember what Joe Dressner wrote about one his own visits where he samely imitated the rolling r's of Michel Juillot, an iconic vintner of Mercurey (scroll down this page to february 11 2011). Dominique says that he is born in the Hospices de Beaune and that why he speaks French, but his parents were from the more rustic Saône-et-Loire and they also would roll their r's, which people in Beaune would pretend not understand. B. who is also born in Burgundy understand these nuances but for my part I learn about these invisible borderd within Burgundy. Whatever, I can assure you that the rolling r's of Dominique are not only fun to hear but authentic sounding, you must have basked in this accent to regurgitate it this way. Whatver, as a child he would help his grandfathers, himself would go mostly to Mercurey while his brother would go to Saint-Denis-de-Vaux. The grandfathers were already old at that time but they still worked, plus they had farm animals, horses and cows and they grew crops and fruit trees. He remember routinely trimming the vines in summer and then napping in the shadow with his grandfather. He loved making wine from this time and this eventually resurfaced later. Hanging hoses While we're speaking in the chai at the beginning of our visit, someone knocks at the door, it's an Icone employee who stops at the winery to take some bottle samples for a later check. I'm not familiar with the way the agrément approval for the appellation status unfolds, but these checks are now made around the year by a new audit structure named Icone which is in charge of the agreement checks. Juliana, who seems to be from Holland if I can judge from her accent, comes here every year on a pre-planified schedule like she does in other wineries to take away some samples that will be later tasted and given (or not) the appellation status (the agrément). Dominique and the Icone employee seem to get along very friendly, no bad feelings here, even if his wines occasionally get stamped out for atypicité. Still, Dominique says that with the 10 appellations of his wine range, considering the 7 bottles-per-appellation he must put on the side for the Icone checks, this makes a total of 70 bottles for which there's no compensation. Also, there are 7 people in the Icone jury overlooking the wines, and 6 out of 7 of these guys must agree to have the wine go through, which is a tough exam. Dominique says that it's particularly stressful because he's not sure all these tasters have the adequate tasting capabilities. Also, they're tasting the wines when they've already been purchased by the customers : they're going to taste the 2010 now and there's no more stock in the cellar (except the compulsory samples put aside). What happens sometimes is that with the inertia of the agreement checks made randomly along the year, a given wine is sometimes refused the appellation status but it's already sold out when that happens, and under the now-supposedly-wrong label. For example his own employee Julien Albater who set up a négoce (Sextant) and is making wine from organic grapes have been refused the agrément almost systematically. The Appellation body tolerates that this happens a few times but it can decide to block the whole stock of the winery after three occurrences. Dominique says that considering the way his wines are made, without any correction, and from a vineyard farmed the ancient way through hard work and without weedkillers or fertilizers, these wines are more terroir-driven than many others who uses these chemicals or use caterpillars to get machine-friendly parcels even if the terroir gets lost in the way. It's mind boggling that such real wines are barred from the Appellation status when others produced through heavy chemical input in the vineyard, cellar corrections or heavy wood taste in the cellar get through without a question. The reason, Dominique says, is that the tasters who are also vignerons make themselves sulfur-loaded, chaptalized and oaky wines and they tend to promote the type of wines they make. But the artisan vignerons are growing in number and they will not be defeated, Dominique adding that with Fred Cossard they let the control body know that they challenged their tasting skills. Standing against a Grenier fermenter Dominique Derain says that he is working his vineyard organicly and the reason is simple : that's the way he learned it when he grew up as a child and worked with his grandparents. They used a bit of Bordeaux mix for spraying and never added sulfur on the incoming grapes, anyway they were already beginning to ferment in the horse-drawn gondola on their way to the chai... Today also he doesn't add sulfur on the grapes and the juice turns brown but it's not a problem, they get white by themselves after some time [many vintners are afraid of the browning of their juice and think it's a good thing to prevent it through sulfur adding at this early stage]. He may add sulfur at the racking before bottling but in very moderate doses, he says that what's important is to let the wine combine the sulfur so that after some time there is no more free sulfur, but only total sulfur. There's a 4-month grey zone after bottling when the wine must be protected and when things can happen, then after this delay the wine is stable. As he exports to Japan he knows through the compulsory analysis how much sulfur his wines have, it's between 8 and 60 in total sulfur. The free sulfur (the harmful SO2) is nul 3 or 4 months after bottling in all cases, because he otherwise never added sulfur and the wine has thus no problem to assimilate and transform the few sulfur he added before bottling. He says that routinely you will find figures like 170 for total sulfur and 50 for free sulfur in the conventional wines made in the region, which is enormous. These wines have been repeatedly clubbed with sulfur addings beginning on the incoming grapes on harvest day and they're obviously dead.
We didn't get time to visit the vineyards this time (you spend easily an afternoon in the cellar with Dominique Derain) but we spoke about the arduous issue of finding parcels in Burgundy. Dominique says that vineyards are costly in Burgundy, something like 450 000 € an hectare when you count the planting and other investments. Prices depend also of the terroir, like a parcel of red Chassagne Village will cost 40 000 € per ouvrée. An ouvrée is an ancient surface measure which is still used by growers and vignerons (the name comes from ouvrage and it's literally the surface that a worker could work on for one day) and it makes 4,28 ares or 428 square meters. You find for example, he says, white Chassagne 1er Cru (les Vergers) at 85 000 € an ouvrée. If you remind that you need 23,33 ouvrées to make an hectare, that makes these plots out of reach for simple vintners. On the other hand you can find generic-Bourgogne parcels at 2000 € an ouvrée (for example in Corpeau, on the lows near Puligny), and considering a pièce (a cask full of wine) brings back 500 € you can plan to pay back your investment in about 5 years. The tasting corner of the cellar with posters and its Saint Vincent At one point, Dominique Derain says that if you need to be around in the cellar when the juice turns into wine, it's utterly important to stop wanting to "make" or "intervene", this human trait that compels you to "create the good to help others" and doesn't help the wine at the end. What is important s being attentive like for your children : you may dream that they follow the successful studies that you had in mind for them but if they never follow that path you still love them and they're just fine and happy. Ambitions are important when you make wine but you must stay realist and not force things. Dreams are important too : Dominique says that for example that years ago he used to walk along a particular parcel in Saint-Aubin Rouge le Ban (he has always been hiking in the region) and that he casually thought that this particular parcel was the one he'd like to have if he was to make wine from Saint Aubin, and he ended up purchasing 1,15 hectare at this very spot. Plus, it was on sale for 6 years following a bankrupt and when he came and asked about it he got it for a fraction of the initial price... Now he jokes and says that he is not sure the dream-come-true will work if he chooses to hike in the Montrachet and spots a particular parcel there...

On this picture you can see the altar-like corner of the cellar where we taste the wines, there are postcards, pictures, empty bottles, the Saint-Vincent statue, there's also the Tolmer poster (Epaulé Jeté), the Vive-le-vin-naturel poster designed a century ago, and on the left, an intriguing color drawing that he will use as a poster for the winery. It's a manga-inspired drawing with Celtic and biblical undertones made by a promising young woman named Eleonore Ware (her blog here and more here). This Tentation drawing was for the Bourgogne Rouge. The next poster he'l order will be for the Bourgogne Blanc and it will be designed by Marc-Antoine Mathieu and it will be in black and white. This other artist is working about dream and reality and his poster/label should be a nice surprise. The color of wine Asked about differences between the type of sulfur used in the past before bottling and the one used now, Dominique Derain says that in the past people used powdered sulfur when today it's liquid sulfur. The elders would do like gradma when she'd light a spoon of powdered sulfur over her vegetable cans to "eat" the oxygen. The liquid sulfur on the other hand behaves differently : when mixed with the product it can even be oxydative. He says that the reason this new appellation agreement was set up (Icone) in Burgundy was that there were too much oxydative whites in the recent past. Some research had shown that bisulfites were generating oxydative taste in these mommified wines : the wines get through a sterile filtration, get sulfured, re-acidified and these wines are thus mummified and dead, the sulfur holding the mummy strips together otherwise everything would fall apart, he grins. On the other hand it's a sensitive issue because many tasters mistake overmaturity or evolution with oxydative notes, but it's now documented that bisulfite-addings generate oxydative taste..
This said, he is not an anti-sulfur fanatic and relies on analysis to decide what he'll do in this matter. The wines are racked without using pumps, a month before bottling, with air pressure pushing the wine out of the container. If he needs to get rid of the lees during the élevage, he doesn't rack the cask like it's usually done, he just siphoons the lees away, this way he doesn't have to use sulfur as a protection during the process. He uses a simple hose to do that, and when the thick lees he wants to get rid off seem to have gone, he stops the operation. He decants what he took out and pours back the clear part if any, and the wine mostly wasn't touched during this parting of the lees, which makes a big diffence in the wine at the end.
He says that his juices lack nitrogen but yeasts degrade amino acids and that's how sulfur is being made by the wine itself. When they rack the way they do, if they have 15 mg of free sulfur in the casks, they find 12mg when the wine reachs the vats and they have added nothing in between. If the analysis finds a sulfur level of 7 mg, they'll add 0,8 (1/4 of a gram) to get 15 mg, which is the fine level that the wine found by itself.
Note : the 1974 on the pic on right is a joke, this is Saint-Aubin 2011... Checking a white Dominique Derain says that what he makes here is fit for this place, this cellar and yeast ambiance and these terroirs but there's hardly a recipe that works universally, even the people who do the job count and have their mysterious influence that plays a part. As he follows the biodybnamic principles he also knows that cosmic factors play a role, beginning with the moon. He says that his father who worked in the wine-négoce field, used to have his standard wine when he organised a tasting to buy wine from the courtiers, meaning that aside from the dozens of glasses filled with the different wines to choose from, he would taste his own standard wine (actually a Morgon) which he knew well and which could help him point to an unusual tasting parameter brought by the weather/moon/other conditions. This way he would know what not to take into account or minimize in the other wines if he found a default in his Morgon. Dominique says that the variations brought by non-controllable parameters make you have second thoughts about the decision of the tasting jury for the agrément giving (or refusing) the appellation status. He adds with a laugh that if he was himself part of this jury, he would veto many wines because they're oaky and he doesn't like that in a wine, and he would end up being fired because few mainstream wines would pass...
Speaking of the vineyard management, Dominique says that he never begins pruning before january 22 because the sap must be in the proper stage, the pruning season lasting 3/4 months. Pouring his white Burgundy Dominique grabs a bottle and after checking the wine, he pours it in our glasses :
__ Derain, Bourgogne La Combe 2011, from a parcel in Puligny-Montrachet (30 ares). Clay-silt terroir, no limestone. In puligny there is an area which used to be covered with wetlands long time ago, this is there. The wine is raised in old casks (8 years) and bottled at Easter. When he needs casks he buys them second hand, going to the winery where he tastes the wine still filling the cask to see how it feels. If it's fine (not oaky or not deviant in some way), he'll buy the cask, and if he needs to use a sulfur wick, he'll do it himself. This white has a nice tension and richness in the mouth. B. says that the touch of the wine is gourmand, with fullness without heaviness.
2011 was a particular vintage in the way that the weather was nice until december, so that the wines could complete their 2 fermentations quietly and without bumps. July was not very nice but otherwise from august it was just a straight road of fair weather, and it kept so after the harvest. Everything went smooth and the fermentation finished quickly by itself when on wild yeast it's common that it stops at one point in winter and starts again in spring. The Bourgogne Blanc like the Bourgogne Rouge (the generic Burgundies) are bottled early because they're already seducing and they're better with this freshness and richness. There's 8 casks of this wine, 2500 bottles.
__ Derain Saint-Aubin 1er Cru En Remilly 2011. Here the terroir is at the opposite compared to the parcel of the previous wine : while the first was in the plain of Puligny, here the vineyard sits above Montrachet. 70-are surface, 11 casks (pièces or a bit more than 3000 bottles for this cuvée. Bottles 3 weeks ago. The nose is more powerful and inspiring, we're obviously on higher grounds. Terroir of crushed marble stone, marble being the result of a very slow sedimentation of the sea bed. Still, you don't find any fossils here, that's because the sedimentation was so slow. Exposition full south, the parcel is just 50 meters behind Les Chevaliers. Very séveux (sappy ?) in the mouth, makes you salivate, nice substance. Nice wine, B. says too, with iode notes. Just got a pre-filtration, some sort of light filtration. Opened bottles Dominique Derain also makes an Aligoté in Corpeau, a wine that sells very fast from around november 25 in a few selected places like Le Verre Volé, Le Vin en Tête, Chapeau Melon, les caves Augé, Que du Bon, le Chapeau Melon. He says that Aligoté is often planted in the wrong terroir, usually to make a base wine for crémant, the rest being Pinot/Chardonnay (they are allowed to put 70 % of Aligoté in the blend). He makes a 100 % sparkling Aligoté because it's excellent when the vines are old and planted in the right place. He says that in the climat of Le Puits there was not long ago some 100-year-old Aligoté, he adds that the Aligoté played a role in the fame of the white Burgundies. When you look close in the old parcels you find some Aligoté complanted even with the red. When you see the mainstream Aligoté, he says, the grapes look green and the juice is green too, it's so acid that your eyes get wet, but the thing is, all this Aligoté comes from a bad selection which is designed to make huge yields because they're just a base wine for a crémant. To make things worse they are often planted on a north expostion. For his Aligoté in Corpeau he used massal selections made from an old parcel of Aligoté which was in Puligny and this way he keeps the Aligoté culture alive. He is also working with Aubert de Villaine to revive the aligoté and replant the qualitative Aligoté Doré. I had tasted his Allez Goutons (means "let's taste" which sounds in French like Aligoté) and it was a pleasure of freshness and acidulous candy.
As he is part of a large group of wineries (35) working on biodynamy (they have sessions to learn and emulate on dynamized preparations for biodynamic sprayings), he noticed that many wineries including some very prestigious like the Romanée Conti work hard to preserve and multiply the selections of their very old parcels, some being 100 years old. The vaulted cask cellar (the whites one) __ Julien Altaber (Sextant), Puligny-Montrachet 2011. Not Dominique Derain's wine, but the one of his employee Julien (they've been working together for 10 years), who has been making wine from purchased grapes for about 5 years while keeping his day job at Derain. Dominique says that he is very talented and makes beautiful wines. Fermented in barrel. Bottled a week before, unfiltered, still a nice light in the wine. Nice nose. Fruity wine with substance and vividness.
Julien also makes some Aligoté from a 80-year-old parcel.
__ Derain Saint-Aubin Village 2010, our first red here. The 2011 is still in casks and will be racked right after the harvest 2012 so that the new wine will be flowed there (without pump as explained above) without the need of using a sulfur wick. He often does that when possible. 90-year-old vines. Aromas of cherry stone, dark cherry, almond too, says B. He says that this Pinot Noir has the wildest aromas of the estate. Along the parcel there are various bushes and trees like nerprun with its small red berries and épine-vinette, another type of bush with small berries, and they all certainly participate to the wild aromas of this wine. They're supposed to be poison but he sucks these berries once in a while since he's a child [that may explain his health and good mood]... The wine is bottled since december and it begins to reveal itsel, he says. Good length. During the fermentation they do some pigeage with the feet or even the knees, and they feel the wine this way, the temperature for example, the texture, by also drinking some juice. The fermentation vats in here come all from his grandfather, they were renovated by Marc Grenier, that's why there's his plaque on the vats.
Speaking of the winemaking of the reds, he routinely mixes destemmed grapes and whole-clustered grapes, in what the French vintners call the mille feuille scheme, with successive layers alternating whole-clustered and destemmed grapes. The first layer is destemmed to get juice and they also finish with a destemmed-grapes layer. They usually let the well ripe grapes whole-clustered. To separate the stem from the grapes, they've been using for years an old lid made apparently from wicker and wood, you just brush the clusters on it and the grapes come through it, down into the fermenter (pic on left). Dominique says that what is very important is to have the grapes reach the chai in perfect conditions, and for that he uses boxes (and hand picking of course). He could have more supplness in his Saint-Aubin by using only whole-clustered grapes but he like the structure he gets through this multi-layers mode.
In 2010, the summer was a bit like 2011 except that it wasn't warm, it was cool all the time, which gave wines with tension and minerality. In 2011 they had the same weather but warmer temperatures, especially at the end. 2011 was very dry from janurary to june, then 6 weeks of rain around july, then fair weather. In 2011 he waited til september 6 because the grapes lacked sugar, and as he doesn't use lab yeasts designed to bring specific aromas, he relies only on the grapes and has to wait for the right time. Speaking of conventional winemaking and vineyard management, the vignerons of the region had big trouble : they like usuall fertilized the vineyards in january, these fertilizers nitrify with water and the growers count on the winter/spring rains to do the job, but in 2011 there was no rain at all between january and june, and rain came in july at the beginning of veraison : that's we can call a disaster scenario. They had to harvest in august because the grapes were rotting on the vines, filling the gondolas with unripe grapes that were mostly rotting. He picked his own grapes 3 weeks later and they were fine except for the millerandage caused by the water on the flowers. The red-wines cellar Dominique Derain has 60 % of his working surface in reds, on a total of 5,5 hectares. There are about 22 wineries in Saint Aubin, with maybe 250 hectares of vineyards. When he began to work here some 24 years ago, there was 60 % of red wine on the planted vineyards of Saint-Aubin, 10 years later it was 60 % of white and now it's 80 % of white and he says with a laugh that in another 10 years he'll have the Monopole of reds on Saint-Aubin. He says that red Saint-Aubin is good, but the rent for whites is higher, the bottle sells for more and it's easier to make white even if it's not ripe (people usually add sugar and that makes the job). Also there's the complex coming from neighboring terroirs like Puligny, Meursault, Chassagne and vignerons want to make white here too. Take Saint-Aubin Rouge (red) Le Puits, he says, it's a wonderful red wine and they've been all uprooted. He still has 12 ares of it (it's a rent) but the owner wanted to have it replanted in white because the financial return would be higher, so Dominique told him that he was ready to pay the same rent as if it was a white if that could help because it would have been a disaster to uproot this last Pinot Noir of the terroir. Dominique Derain has now the Monopole of making red wine on Saint-Aubin Le Puits... When he began to work around there 30 years ago, he remembers that there were still reds in Puligny also, but as far as he remembers the wine was not good, although he adds that it could have come from bad winemaking skills. He thinks that Saint-Aubin on the other hand deserves to keep a sizeable red surface.
On Mercurey, he has a plot of 100-year-old complanted vines, Pinot Noir with Pinot Beurrot, that's now rare but was quiet mainstream longtime ago to have several varieties planted together in the same parcel. The total planted surface on Mercurey is about 700 hectares. The Pinot Beurrot is still included in the appellation status dating from 1935, so he could replant them if he had to uproot them one day. This vineyard comes as said above from his grandfather. Now, one of the reasons why growers have uprooted the Pinot Beurrot part in their Pinot Noir was because they wrongly think that a dark color is better, and as Pinot Beurot (named also Pinot Gris) is clear, that brings the color in the wrong direction in their eyes (even if with only 15 % of the given plot). He says that many vignerons would be ready to add even a darker color than their Pinot Noir, and without giving more details he says that in his younger years while working for other estates he witnessed by himself the adding of some Alicante Bouschet (a dark-red variety) in the Pinot Noir to get a more suitable (in their mind) color. It's still being made, with funny variants, the Côte de Beaune using Alicante-Bouschet and the Côte de Nuits prefering Syrah. But to rewind a little more, until around 1980/1981 before they were uprooted, there were a few coloring hybrid varieties that were still planted across the region for this color purpose : the Baco Noir, the 55, Gamay Fréaux. These plots were officially legal because they were given to the employees for their wine needs, but some of the grapes conveniently found their way to the chai and the Pinot-Noir fermenters... Dominique Derain says that amateurs actually like his Pinot Noir even if its color is light, and his Mercurey 2011 is sold out. He says he's just making the wines like his grandfather did, and people love the result. He remembers the wines of his grandpa, there were so light that they sometimes looked like some Jura Poulsard, an almost rosé wine. Pouring his red Dominique Derain works on his Mercurey plot since 2000, this is the one of his grandfather, where he used to take a nap when he was a child after helping his grandpa trim the vines. He rents the plot to his mother as she owns it today. There's still a cherry tree, it's not the same than in his young years, a new tree was replanted long time ago, but he feels good that there's still this tree in the parcel, and that now he's keeping the tradition and the real work. He says that it was common back then to have fruit trees in the vineyard. They were eliminated due to the mechanization first but foremost because of the weedkillers use. Of course the vineyard tractors (the enjambeurs also couldn't get along with a tree in a vineyard and they were another reason to uproot the cherry trees. His grandfather never used a tractor in the vineyard or even a car (the only motorized vehicule he has was a moped), he used a horse for the vineyard work. Dominique says that horses were still used until 40 years ago between the rows. He himself used a horse during 10 years, even making promotion demos in the Romanée Conti vineyards for a horse-drawn plowing training. But now he doesn't think it's that interesting, it's still heavy (900 kg) plus horses need lots of attention and care even when you don't use them.

We tasted some wine in the cask cellar (pictures above), a wonderful place with a vaulted ceiling which was built several centuries ago. there are 2 such vaulted cask rooms, you can see above the first one with Dominique's bottle cellar in the far end (with many bottles from fellow vintners), and the second one with barrels only.
__ Derain Saint-Aubin Le Ban 2011. As said, from a barrel deemed to bottled in december. Still a bit turbid but very nice, vivid color. A bit of reduction. I take some of the gas away by covering the glass and shaking it. Fruity and fresh wine. Ampleness in the end of the mouth, B. says.
__ Derain Saint-Aubin Le Puits 2011 (we're back in the tasting corner in the cellar). Bottled opened the previous day. 12 ares, 500 bottles. The last red Saint-Aubin Le Puits, the "Monopole" we were speaking about. Very nice wine, that would be a pity indeed to erase this last red parcel there... The vines are 23 years old, they're a massal selection from the parcel of Le Ban. Somptuous nose, B. says. Supple and crunchy, with refined tannins. Length.
__ Derain Pommard les Petits Noizons 2011, a village often assimilated to a 1er Cru. 70-year-old vines on average, on 60 centimeters of red earth with ferrous soil, and limestone rock table underneath. It's a top terroir, he says there's a great energy in this soil. Bottled at Easter. More discreet on the nose, this is Pommard. Very refined and elegant, goes down very well when I remember some very-tannic Pommard. Tight texture, says B. Blueberry, tobacco leaf.Dominique says that with the biodynamic vineyard management, he gets higher acidity on the wine, and a stable acidity, referring to the sudden drop of acidity that conventional wineries witness and which is caused by the use of potash fertilizers. Potash creates a fictitious acidity which disappears after the fermentation. The yields here are about 28 ho/ha for this wine. The color of the wine is not "typical" in the appellation-system sense, but his Pommard are made without forced extraction or higher fermentation temperatures, that's all.
__ Derain Gevrey-Chambertin 2011. From a 108-year-old parcel (20 ares) and a 8-year-old one (10 ares), the two being vinified together since 2009. Altogether they make yields of 35 ho/ha. Plowing helps these vines in this regard, no fertilizers of course. He got this parcel in 1995. This zone of Gevrey is know by elders as where you could find the vins medecins, meaning that the wines made there could enrich the other wines with substance and structure. Very beautiful wine. Spicy notes. Dominique says that he loves this terroir. Ripe-cherry notes, blackberry. White pepper too. Chewy feel. Saint-Aubain Le Ban 2011 We're speaking of casks and wood, and Dominique Derain says that he made his first oak casks in 1977, ity was rather new for Burgundy where oak contrary to what we often think, was an alien type of wood for the casks. Before 1977 the casks in the local cooperages were made from chestnut wood. When oak was used in cooperages in Burgundy, he says, the wooden staves were cut in such a manner from the tree trunk that it would be porous and they would coat it with sodium silicate to keep it from leaking. In Burgundy vigneron would choose oak for reason of solidity because the chestnut wood is soft and was easily damaged when rolled. the Burgundy strapping (cerclage bourguignon) is mostly around the bulging part of the barrel precisely to reinforce and protect the chestnut wood when these vessels were rolled full. The front bottom would be routinely in oak for esthetic purposes, plus also two staves including the one with the hole for solidity reasons and that's all. Few people know that Burgundy wine was aged in the past in chestnut, not oak. Around the mid-1970s', the Cognac cooperages which were looking for new markets because of a shortage of orders in their home region (Bordeaux and Cognac) came here and then even the local coopers began to make oak barrels. Dominique remembers that in the cooperage where he was then employed (Meyer, now closed down), they made their first oak casks in 1977-1978 and they had to flush hot water inside before delivery in order to get the tannins out, because the customers didn't like these casks, the wood taste was too big for them compared to the chestnut barrels they were used to. The vignerons still shifted to these oak casks because they were nicer, and also it was the time when the wineries were beginning to sell directly to the customers (before it was more to the Négoce) and they noticed that the oaky taste was a plus for a novice clientèle. Now he still works with oak casks even if old ones, the advantage of oak casks is that they stand time much better. The thing is to carefully choose the cask, even if it's tamed by years of use in another winery, that's why he tastes the wine of the cask at the other winery before deciding to purchase the cask. Speaking of chestnut wood, we happened to have drived the previous day in the Vallée de Vaux (B.'s brother is buying an old village house in one of the villages there) and we were surprised to see so many chestnut trees in the large forest above the valley, so I understand now that the coopers just used the type of wood that was plentiful around. The soil under this forest is granitic and it's good for chestnut trees. By the way, granite is good for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay too, Dominique says, even if it's know to be good for Gamay. A veil wine from Burgundy Then after we tasted all these wines and as Dominique was answering to a question of ours, he said that he was eyeing some changes and that his 5,5-hectare surface was not fixed forever. No more on this but we'll watch closely... He then asked us if we wanted to taste some Jura wine from Derain and as I guess our eyes seemed to pop out, he precised : a veil wine made here in Burgundy. That was another divine surprise : Dominique got an empty cask from Tissot in Jura, which had been used for a long maturation of Vin Jaune and instead of Savagnin he filled it with with some Chardonnay 2005, following which the magic yeasts of the Vin Jaune made their job just the same with the Chardonnay. He made 200 bottles (50 cl) of this wine, labelled in table wine. He could have chosen to make a veil wine from Aligoté, but first he is short on Aligoté in terms of volume, and he says that what he doesn't like for a veil wine is too much acidity, and both Savagnin and Aligoté have too much acidity for a veil-wine vinification, he says. He often comes across burning, acid Savagnin oxidative wines even though there are superb veil wines from Overnoy, Tissot, Ganevat and Clairet but most of what you find on the market he says is too acid. Dominique Derain opens the mystery bottle in front of us :
__ Derain Voile Not, Vin de France (table wine). Made from Bourgogne Blanc (Chardonnay) La Combe 2005. Bottled in january 2011. It was time to bottle it because the angels in this cellar seemed to have siphooned more than their share : they bottled 100 liters only from an initial volume of 215 liters. He had filled the cask with a finished (completed fermentations) wine devoid of SO2 and the veil had fully settled on the Chardonnay 15 days after the filling. They didn't touch the barrel for years even to taste the wine, and they really didn't taste the wine until in december 2010, when he drilled a hole beneath the wine surface so as to have a taste without damaging the veil, it tasted good and after looking at the moon calendar, they set up a date to bottle the cask. So they literally did nothing on this wine, the cask was like in Jura in an attic, cold in winter and hot in summer and here is the miracle years after... Very nice wine indeed, intense and deep. Gingerbread, spices. Nice concentration. It has the roundness and softness of Chardonnay. No SO2 at all here of course. B. notes cocoa, pistachio, gingerbread. For the anecdote, the cask is now gone at Michel Couvreur (the whisky maker in Burgundy) and it's full of whisky now. Here is a happy barrel that seem to follow a bright carrer...

Dominique Derain exports about 55 % of his wines, to the United States (Jenny & François - Integrity Wines), Japan (Oeno Connexion), China (Shanghai, Frank Pecol - Hong-Kong, la Cabane à Vins), Taiwan (Jean-Marc Nolant), Australia (Living Wines) Belgium (R & Rhone), the U.K. (les Caves de Pyrène), Italy (Les Caves de Pyrène), Denmark (Pétillant), Sweden (Vin & Natur), Norway, Russia (Biowine), Canada (Quebec, Rezin), Germany, Switzerland (Le Passeur de Vin).
In Paris, among other venues, you can find the wines at Caves Augé, Lavinia, Le Verre Volé, Le Vin en Tête, Que du Bon, la Cave des Papilles, Crus et Découvertes, Mi-Fugue Mi-Raisin, La Crêmerie. le Garde Robe...
The picture below was inspired by B. who saw a similarity between these two expressions and began to shoot Dominique's portrait there.

Catherine et Dominique Derain 46 rue des Perrières 21190 Saint-Aubin phone + 33 3 80 21 35 49 www.domainederain.com

The two faces of Bacchus

Comments

[Ken Liao]

This is Ken Liao from Guangzhou Modern City Real Estate Group Co., Ltd. Guangzhou south China. I am very interested in your vineyard and willing to be your business partner. I am enquiring that do you have agency in China? If you are looking for exclusive agency in China, our company is very pleased to be part of your business. I look forward to hearing from you. Email: [email protected]

[Marc Temmerman]

Got to know the En Remilly at restaurant Sir Kwinten (Lennik-Belgium), ran by best sommelier of Belgium 2013.
Visited the winery summer 2014. Great guy, genuine. Could only buy 2013.
Will have to be patient for a few years before enjoying En Remilly, Le Ban and the Mercurey.