Julien Altaber, Saint-Aubin (Burgundy)

Julien Altaber looking at his Bourgogne rouge (maceration) Saint Aubin, Burgundy
I'm more and more convinced that one of the best way to start a winery is to quietly put the pieces together while keeping a day job at another winery; this way, you'll not only preserve your financial independance by being less dependant on banks, but you'll also keep learning from the vintner you're working with, considering you chose one you're valuing the expertise of. Quite a number of the artisan vintners I visited these past years have started their career this way, and it took years for example for Thierry Allemand before he quit his day job and worked full time on his own vineyards and wines. Like for the making a good wine, patience is the key to setting up a winery, it seems...

I happened to taste my first Sextant wine as I was visiting Dominique Derain a few weeks ago, Dominique kindly pouring me one of Julien's wines among his own wines. I hadn't the opportunity to go to Angers for the Dive Bouteille or Renaissance des Appellations last january, otherwise like Aaron recounted on this story, I would have certainly tasted his wines to keep warm, Dominique Derain's table being swamped by tasters fighting for their pours...

Julien Altaber set up his négoce in 2007, making wine from grapes purchased here and there, and as he didn't have a facility of his own, he has been making the wines in a side cellar of Dominique Derain until he'd find a building to settle in (the French Customs usually don't like having two wineries under the same roof). So I visited him at Derain (picture on right) on my way back to Paris from Beaune. The weather was beautiful, the harvest season mostly over, and riding along the former N6 highway in the valley leading to Saint-Aubin was a biker's dream trip, with the swinging road alternating woods and vineyards.

Dominique Derain (center) with son Emile (right) and Julien Altaber I arrived at the winery around 11am, parked the motorbike in the courtyard and walked in; Dominique Derain was there with his son Emile and Julien Altaber, the Derains were leaving but we had time to chat about the news since my last visit. His son Emile enrolled for a BTS Viticulture & Enology at the Davaillé wine school in southern Burgundy, and from what I understand he is interested in the type of vinification and vineyard management they teach over there (with the proximity of Beaujolais) compared to the wine school of Beaune. He'll learn more about ways he's not familiar with, including for the vins primeurs. He has a one-week training also these days in the southern Rhone (Rasteau). Julien says that in the past, the students (whose parents were already running a winery) would make their training week in, say, their uncle's winery on the other side of the street, and as a result they didn't learn anything because their uncle or neighbor was usually working like their father. So, the lycée viticole (the wine school) changed its policy and selected wineries for the trainees that were far away from their home region.
The last grapes have been picked, including the Pommard and lastly Julien's Aligotés. This picture was shot in Dominique Derain's vat room which had transformed since the last time we visited, there seem to be more wooden fermenters, and there was a vertical press along the wall. For some reason I was asking if they cool the grapes sometimes prior to the vinification, Dominique says no, even when it's hot, he adds that as they're working with wild yeasts, they can adapt to whatever conditions they face. He also says that the acidity is a more important factor than the temperature at the harvest. Julien's press To rewind back to how it began, Julien Altaber landed here 10 years ago for a training, after working 2 years in a large négoce house in Beaune (Champy). As he had failed his exam then, he enrolled for another year in the school and looked for another training, looking this time for a small wine farm, preferably farming organic as he had never had the opportunity to work in such wineries until then. He found Dominique Derain who took him for his one-year training. At the end of this training, Dominique offered him to work here for some time, at least for the following harvest if he wanted to, after which he was hired for good. Then in 2007 as he was looking for a way to make a wine of his own, he thought about a friend of his who had set up his winery in 2003 and who was still selling part of his grapes to the local coop. These grapes were beautiful and healthy and the coop would pay the basic price for them, that is very little, so he thought he definitely could begin to work with these grapes. He has no family ties in the area, meaning that he couldn't expect to get access to some family parcels, so this back door was a good springboard for him.
Julien studied at the Davaillé wine school in Macon and also at the Viti-Oeno of Beaune, where he was in the same class than Cécile Tremblay. Julien Altaber in his vat room So that's the way it began, with the purchase of grapes from a friend who was also debuting in the trade. Dominique Derain kindly let him use his tools and found a basement room which he could use and which was separate enough for the French Customs, at least as a temporary solution (this alcoholic-beverage administration doesn't want to see 2 different wineries under the same roof by fear of illegal transfer of wine from one winery to the other). At first he made some Bourgogne Rouge and some Bourgogne Blanc and then with his wife Emilie he bought a parcel of Aligoté on Puligny, planted with 80 to 90-years-old vines. They got it in 2009 from someone who couldn't find a buyer for a year, the reason being that Aligoté doesn't interest people, and even less if they're old (their yields are much lower)... His first vintage from this aligoté is the 2010. For the rest, he keeps buying grapes here and there, mostly from the small biodynamic growers he's working with regularly to prepare together the specific dynamized solutions. Year on, year off, he manages to get small volumes of interesting terroirs (and interesting vineyards) like 2 pièces of Maranges, 1 1/2 pièce of Pulugny-Montrachet, 2 pièces of Bourgogne 1er Cru white and so on... The old Aligoté fermenting We walk to his own vat room inside Dominique Derain's facility, it's a surface room which is kind of like a cellar because of the slope, it's fresh around the year. You access it from the street, so it's a bit better regarding the Customs regulations (the wineries must be separate). The place is a bit cramped in addition to the low ceiling, but he manages to do his stuff in there. And fortunately he found recently a facility in the village a couple of streets from here (picture on the right), it's a village house with cellar which belonged to a farmer who made his own wine there. the retired vigneron had just put a for-sale sign and he was surprised there were no takers, it seems wineries are more interested in the small "industrial zone" being built near the next village (named Gamay), which has lots that are easier to access with vehicules. This old house would be too small for a medium winery but it fits perfectly his own size and his planned volumes. He should begin to move in in the next few months, it's for him another good step to flying with his own wings. Now he has to find more vines either rented or for sale. But he says it was nice to have the opportunity to start his winery/négoce this way, all the while keeping his day job with Dominique Derain, it helped smooth the jumpstart. Asked how he found his first customers, he says that working with Derain was the big push, especially that his own wines being virtually sold out, Derain tells his prospective buyers about his protégé, who works along the same philosophy, so it often ends up with orders for Julien's wines (who doesn't have big volumes of wines himself yet). But Julien tries to differentiate clearly his winery from Derain's so sas not to fool the customers : beyond the different style of labels, they're not doing the same wine fairs, Derain goes to Renaissance des Appellations while he goes to La Dive (now iconic wine-tasting events in the Loire), or Derain goes to Vinicircus while he goes to Dix Vins Cochons, another gem of a wine event, set in Auvergne (eastern Loire in december). This all helps counterbalance the fact that they've been making wine under the same roof and it helps keep each of them independant.
Julien shows me the small vat with the old aligoté. The destemmed grapes ferment quiety in there (they were among his last grapes to come in). Julien grabs a couple of glasses and rties to get some juice by laying down one of them among the grapes so that it fills up, but he ends up using a wine thief. I'm not an expert of predicting a wine from its juice but this is utterly delicious, the natural sugar is so sweet and somptuous (picture on left)... The grapes are very small and almost orange in color, that's why this particular sub-variety of aligoté is called aligoté doré. Aubert de Villaine who has been doing selection work on this variety, has lots of it in Bouzeron, it's a qualitative branch of aligoté. De Villaine gave him 200 grafts because he'd like to see this variety grown elsewhere than in Bouzeron. He used these grafts to replace the missing vines in the old parcel. Holding the wicker lid to destem the grapes Julien shows me how he destemmed the aligoté : he had this wicker lid made by a guy from the Jura, Gilles Lacroix who makes a living from manufacturing all sort of things made in wicker (you can see this lid on the making on this linked page, just click on the item to enlarge the pic). Julien says that he heard about this guy indirectly by spotting a picture of Jean-François Ganevat on the web with such a wicker lid in the background, and as this wicker was looking brand new he called Ganevat to know where he got it from. Now, I think my Wineterroirs story on Ganevat could be the page Julien spotted (scroll down to the 12th picture on the linked page), I'm very happy of my role if this is the case (now I hope Gilles Lacroix will have more orders)....
All he needs is put the lid on the vat and brush the clusters on it so that the grapes fall easily in the vat. He will later press the grapes, maybe with Dominique's Vaslin from what I understood. He found this vertical press pictured a few pictures above down in the plain in Epaty (near Chagny), it will make a good job on the reds. I'm amazed that it is still possible to find vintage vertical presses in pristine condition in 2012, but here is a proof...The former owner who used it for a small private plot died recently and it was still used two years ago. The only renovation he made on this press was to put a new paint on the metal base. This press is fully manual, meaning it doesn't have the hydraulic lever system on the top but it's still very easy to maneuver, Julien says : you just have to begin the press in the morning after emptying the fermenter and from time to time you tighten the press one or two clicks on the pawl, getting your pressing done bit by bit this way. As we're speaking of pressing modes, Julien tells ma about Cécile Tremblay who uses a modern vertical press where she adapted a multi-layer system of trays so that the grape juice when pressed doesn't have to go through the skins and must, but goes out on the side, keeping some of its properties intact. I try to visualize the thing and it makes me think immediately to the vertical press for cider, and its piled bags full of crushed apples (see the pictures and videos on this story). This seems a very promising way to keep the juice pristine... Among his wooden fermenters Julien Altaber jokes that this year he may be the only one on the Côte to have as much wine as last year, because he got more purchased grapes than in the previous vintage. All these vines are farmed organic and eventually in biodynany. He stores his bottles in a corner of this vat room too. His first bottlings were in 2007, it was a red. In the first years, as he had only two cuvées, a Burgundy red and a Burgundy white, his whole production was exported, then from 2009 as he widened his terroirs portfolio, he began to sell his wines in France as well. In 2011 his cuvées were : an aligoté, a Bourgogne blanc, a Bourgogne rouge, a Puligny-Montrachet, In 2012 he will have : two cuvées of red, a Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru, a Bourgogne blanc, an Aligoté, a Saint-Aubin 1er Cru, plus maybe this very old aligoté from 80/90 year-old vines. This small vat is some experiment of his own , a maceration with aligoté, and if it yields good results, he might bottle it separately from his other aligoté. He has otherwise 3 pièces of Aligoté coming from a 60-year-old vineyard, which he pressed the usual way and which are now fermenting in casks. The old aligoté is a small parcel, like maybe 20 ares and a whole volume of 2,3 hectoliters. He reminds me that in the region the legal allowance for the aligoté yields is 78 hectoliters per hectare.... I understand why commercial wineries weren't enthusiast into getting their hand on this parcel...
In this room, some of these wooden fermenters are his, some belong to Dominique Derain, thee's one big fermenter that Julien bought and another which was given to him by Dominique. He will use the small fermenter on the side to make his Maranges from grapes purchased to Jean-Yves Vantey (Domaine des Rouges Queues) who is making wine in Sampigny-les-Maranges (when I visited Julien, the harvest was to take place in one or 2 days). Julien will bring his crates and Jean-Yves' pickers will fill them. He's been working with this guy for years, making biodynamic preparations together and so on. The guy also works on a small surface but he recently got an additional vineyard surface and found himself with too much Maranges, that's why he could sell part of his grapes to Julien. Plus, it's a marvelous slope in a clos, it's "les Terres Blanches", a terroir thick with limestone, so he's very happy with this opportunity to work on such Maranges. The previous owner before Jean-Yves took over the parcel was not organic but he didn't used weedkillers and he plowed. It seems that in this world of organic growers making wines without corrections, there is a tradition of brotherhood and mutual exchange of grapes. Julien also says that it is always interesting for a vintner to see how a friend will work and what type of wine he will yields from a parcel he knows. Sylvain came here for the harvest Sylvain who is there too during this visit came here for the harvest and stayed a few more days to help for the chai work. He's not in the wine field [yet] as he studying in another cursus, but we've heard stories and met people who were also pursuing other careers, we know how it often eded up...
The fermenter on the picture on top contains the Bourgogne rouge 2012, it's the first open-top wooden fermenter he bought. These grapes were picked 2 & 3 days before (when I visited). He doesn't correct the temperature and doesn't add CO2. What he does to have more CO2 from the start is that he never puts 100 % of whole clusters : there's always a minimum of 10 % to 20 % of destemmed grapes (that's where the wicker lid is important) in the bottom, which will drown the rest of the grapes into CO2. Now, that's what he does now, but he's still open to variations in his practice, dictated by how the vintage is unfolding. This year for example, the substance is concentrated compared to the volume of the juice, the skins are rich and the grapes small, plus he had this new destemming lid which he was happy to use, so this year the destemming percentage was higher, like about 50. This Bourgogne rouge vat hasn't been foot-stomped yet, he doesn't feel the fermentation has reach the full-blown stage, so he checks it from time to time, it smells good and it's encouraging and only if after a few days it's looking as being starting too slowly, then he'll do something. It could be a remontage (pumping over) or a pigeage, he doesn't know yet, he looks and decides according to the inspiration.
Julien shows me then the fiber vat (pic on left) containing the Bourgogne blanc (the Chardonnay), it's the first time he has it ferment in a fiber vat, not in wood. The surface of the fermenting juice shows the activity of the wild yeasts. This chard has been in there for 10 days, Julien says that this year the fermentation is slow to start, and particularly on chardonnay, and his colleagues say the same. But the fermentation started at last. We taste the juice, it's beautifully onctuous, a delight. (pic on right). This chardonnay comes from several parcels, one he has on Puligny and from which he got the equivalent of one cask, and another volume of two casks that he got from Vincent Talmot at the limit of the Côtes Chalonnaise and the Maconnais, so this chard is an overall small volume. Finding Chardonnay around here, Julien says. was so difficult, growers don't let their parcels easily. Philippe Jambon who works near the Maconnais tipped him about the marvelous terroirs farmed by Vincent Talmot and he made a deal with him. His estate has always been organic, which is also a priceless advantage.
Julien also has a 30-are parcel to plant in the Puligny area and he will put some chardonnay there. In the cask cellar Speaking of the table-wine/AOC labelling issue, Julien says that while he likes the wines that his friends are making under the table-wine label, he considers that as he's working from parcels with an origin and a valued terroir, it would be unfair not to get this origin on the label. So even if it's not easy (his wines are regularly refused the AOC and he has to pass the agreement a second time), he fights for what he considers is a right, especially considering the quality work he's doing in the vineyard (or his growers are doing) and in the cellar. He says that he has, through a friend of his, insider information about the lab data regarding many conventional wines of the region, some being very respectable houses, and it's quite appalling, like a Meursault 1er Cru being bottled a no less than 90 mg of free SO2... I guess this Meursault gets the AOC agreement right away, the Appellation tasters recognizing their favorite chardonnay characteristic.
This said, he could opt for a table-wine label for certain atypical cuvées, like this maceration of old aligoté grapes which he is being testing for the first time.
We're walking to the cellar behind this cramped vat room, it is a traditional cellar with a vaulted ceiling covered with molds. His future facility a couple streets from here also has this type of cellar which was the norm when these vigneron houses were built. It will be a bit wider, there will be a higher ceiling too, and a door connecting the main cellar room to two other cellars nearby. He says it will be a very good work tool for him, with the vat room upstairs just above the cellar. Filling my glass __The first wine we taste in the cellar is an aligoté 2012 which was pressed 6 days ago, spent several hours in a vat and was put into casks the following day. 60-years old vines. The wine is still very turbid. Beautiful, ith honeyed sides, figs. Usually he bottles this wine after Easter. The casks are 6 or 7 years old.
__The next cask we taste is a Saint-Aubin 1er Cru, it was picked 4 days before and it was entonné (put into casks) the following day. He will have 2 casks of this. The mouth is very different, not only because it's Chardonnay and not Aligoté, the parcel is on a slope. He likes the end of the mouth here, with something neat and mineral, and this acidity which comes forward. For me it's such an early stage that I have a hard time trying to foresee the future wine.
Julien says that he wanted initially to go to Auvergne make milk in his uncle's farm, when he was a teenager, but as he parents opposed the idea, he decided to overcome the obstacle by choosing the wine section in the agriculture school, knowing that when the studies would be completed, he'd be allowed legally to run whatever type of farm he wanted to, even a milk-cow farm. But these wine studies eventually caught on him, especially after the first harvests and training sessions, and his fate was sealed...
__The 3rd white, from another cask, is a Puligny. The nose yields lots of ripe-fruit notes, and I find it very elegant at this stage. the wine is less on the sugar, but it's a feel only, that's because of the acidity. The vines are 40 years old, located on a slope in Blagny, above the 1er Crus, just under the woods at the top. The slope is very draining, it's tough for the vines in summer. He has only one cask of this, and we pour the rest of our glass in the cask (we're doing that most of the time anyway). Doing some foot stomping for Derain __We also taste a Bourgogne blanc 2011, which is still in casks and will be bottled early november (he checked the lunar calendar for that). The wine tastes rocks for me, very mineral. Very nice. Asked if his policy is to make such long élevage before bottling this wine, he says "it's not my policy, it's his", pointing to the wine in the cask. He usually bottles in july but at that time the whites were still fermenting strongly (therre was still 15 grams of sugar in june). They had stopped moving during the cold winter and re-started late. He racked the wine only once, moving all the 6 casks together in a vat to take away the thick lees and accelerate the pace. Then at spring he put the wine back in the casks and it started to ferment again, albeit slowly at the beginning.

Speaking of SO2, he doesn't add any on the incoming grapes, and for the rackings, it depends, he may add some if for example he is racking a white with relatively-high volatile. The objective is then to be at 8 or 10 of free SO2, and then there will be none added at bottling. He says that for sure he will never add SO2 at bottling because SO2 doesn't mix in the wine, that's why it has to be done long time ago, at a racking for example. He also tastes the wine samples that he brings home from his cellar, wines that are mostly devoid of added SO2, and as he's tasting the same bottle along several days, storing the bottle casually and without particular protection, it helps him determine if the wine is stable and can handle being let without SO2. If on the other hand the wine turns weird after a couple of days, or the next day, he will either decide it's not yet the time to bottle it, or he's take precautionary measures like SO2 adding at the racking. Julien and Sylvain working on Derain's Mercurey After this tasting in the cellar, Julien and Sylvain went into Dominique Derain's vat room where there was some foot-stomping work to do, first on a wine that I didn't take the note of its terroir, then on a large wooden fermenter of Mercurey, and I could witness again the virtual running exercise on the fermenting grapes. Remember that before the first pigeage, these vats were almost full to the top, at least for this Mercurey, and with the grapes being crushed by the feet, it squeezed a bit to the present volume. Watch a short video of the pigeage here. Dominique's fermenters aren't temperature controlled, the whole things are let free and by their own.
I then went to his home in the village of Chagny in the plain en route to Beaune or Chalon for a sandwich before taking the road back to Paris. It was also the opportunity to taste a red, his Bourgogne rouge 2011. The food was a treat of terine, bread and cheese, some of them coming from auvergne. The real bread, whis was also gorgeous, is made by a woman who works at the Ferme la Gauloise in Dijon, she comes every week to make bread in Dominique Derain's traditional bread oven, so they get several of these great breads every week. And once the oven is still warm, they also cook dishes, terrines and other delicacies in there.
Dominique Derain has a friend who by the way revived the use of traditional bread ovens in Chaudeney : the village which has otherwise no other shop had 4 such stone ovens and he set up a non-profit group named Aux Fours Citoyens with the aim to get people use these bread ovens again. Every first weekend of the month, they make some fire in these ovens and ask people to bring anything they'd like to coo, a dish, terrine, bread or tart. He used to make some bread there himself but they're now so used by the village people that he has to do it on other days. Great initiative indeed...
I didn't take notes about the Bourgogne reds but enjoyed it more and more after the 15 or 30 minutes it had been opened, I had to resist drinking more because I had some distance on the roasd that afternoon... I brought back home a couple of bottles, so I'll add notes on this Bourgogne rouge. Pictured on right is an appealing delicacy that Julien wanted me to try but that I couldn't, it was time to leave. These tripoux which are an Aveyron delicacy made out of veal tripes and mutton looked like pebble stones and I know that if I had said yes I'd be there for another hour, pouring more wine to go with it...

50 % of Julien Altaber's Sextant wines are exported, to Japan first, (Oeno Connexion), then to Denmark (Pétillant), Canada (Quebec - Labelle Bouteille), the United States (New-York - Ten Bells), Italy (Caves de Pyrène), and soon the United Kingdom (Gergovie Wines - Harry Lester) and Australia (Living Wines).
In France, you can find his wines in Paris at Le Verre Volé, Kevin's Autour d'un Verre (he says he sold lots of wine at one of his tastings), le Garde Robe, also Le Tire Bouchon in Rennes.

Julien Altaber -- Sextant Sextant L'Ancienne Cure 21190 Saint-Aubin sextant [dot] sarl [at] orange [dot] fr

Chateau de La Rochepot I shot this picture maybe 5 kilometers after I passed Saint-Aubin on my way to Paris, this is the village of La Rochepot with its 12th-century Chateau de la Rochepot in the woods, as you see them from the winding N6 highway. Next time, I'll take the side road to see how this fairy-tale chateau looks like from close.

Comments

[riccardo]

sextant è un grande vino, bellissimo reportage

[riaan]

Hi I'm trying to understand how these vats just get clean by wine only and let to dry and tightened up with water the next vintage ,can you help me by asking some of these winemakers how these vats get protected from microbes and ext.I'm trying to undersand their chain of tought why this will work when it seems that it shouldn't,because the wine would spoil and there for, been extracted into the next vintage ,can you help with their details why wine should be use with scrubbing brushes and been left that way for the next season.Thank you once again

[Houillon Corentin]

@riaan: water is not used to clean up the wood vats because when you would be back the following year it would be moulded everywhere in the vat ! The less you leave water in the best it is !
They are using only a small amount of wine to wash it and it dries in about 10 minutes and it will be in the wood, the alcohol keeps the moulding away , acidity as well and it keeps a bit of yeast for ever!
Good job for that article!

[Riaan]

Thank you,now I understand a lot better,and it makes much more sense.Best blog ,on the web.

[Bob Siddoway]

Wow, how amazing would it be to live there and make wine using oldschool methods?!

I'm jealous...