Starchild and the Marquis:
Earthiness Meets Refinement in Volnay
Guillaume d’Angerville and Frédéric Lafarge would seem to be unlikely friends; the former is a tall, sartorially elegant, multilingual aristocrat who spent years in New York and London as a banker; the latter seems very much a man of the soil, a modest, bespectacled farmer with deeply calloused hands who is most comfortable in Wellingtons. Such is Frédéric’s affinity for the rhythms of the natural world that Jeremy Seysses, of Domaine Dujac, calls him “Starchild”; Guillaume, on the other hand, is very much at home on the streets of Paris. They grew up together in the medieval hillside village of Volnay and attended the same school in nearby Beaune, their fathers taking turns driving them back and forth. But whereas Michel Lafarge encouraged his son to join him in the family wine business, Jacques d’Angerville sent his only son away. “He basically pushed me out,” Guillaume told me when we met at his eighteenth-century manor house, the finest house in the village of Volnay. “He told me there was no room for me at the domaine. In retrospect I see that he did me a great favor.” Guillaume went on to a successful career with J. P. Morgan in New York and London; his classmate Frédéric stayed in Volnay, with brief stints in Champagne and Bordeaux, working alongside his father in the vineyards and eventually, after he married, moving in to the house next door to his childhood home.
When Jacques d’Angerville died suddenly in the summer of 2003, Guillaume, then living in Paris, suddenly inherited one of Burgundy’s most venerated domaines in the midst of the most torrid summer in recent history. “It was a real baptism by fire,” he says. (You may recall 2003 as the summer in which hundreds of un-air-conditioned French senior citizens died as a result of the unprecedented heat wave.) Fortunately, he was able to consult his old friends the Lafarges, whose house and thirteenth-century cellar, its walls padded with black mold, is just a two-minute walk down the hill. Since that first vintage he has continued to consult with the Lafarges, and he has followed their lead in converting to biodynamics, that cosmically conscious version of organic agriculture based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. “We taste at each other’s cellars several times a year and share information about biodynamie,” d’Angerville says.
Michel Lafarge, the snowy-haired former mayor, had closely observed with his piercing blue eyes more than sixty vintages in Volnay, including the similarly sizzling summer of 1959. “Michel is the wise man of the village,” d’Angerville says, and he continues to work alongside Frédéric in a collaboration that a family friend describes as “seamless.” The same word might well be used for their wines.
Volnay is located in the Côte de Beaune, the southern half of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, and many snobs insist on the superiority of the Côte de Nuits, to the north, but Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet, who owned the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in the mid-nineteenth century, was equally proud of his holdings in Volnay. Although Volnay doesn’t have any official Grands Crus, more than half of its vineyards are Premiers Crus, the second-highest category. If I had to limit my Burgundy buying to just one village, this would probably be it.
The wines of Volnay have been highly regarded since at least the Middle Ages, when the Dukes of Burgundy owned vineyards here and exported the wines to the court. Volnay as we know it is a red wine made from Pinot Noir, although for many centuries it was a light pink, and that perhaps partly explains its reputation as one of the most ethereal and delicate wines of Burgundy. The word “feminine” invariably comes up. (The neighboring commune of Pommard, which generally has heavier soils, is said to produce much more structured, masculine wines.) “Silky florality” is how the wine importer Peter Wasserman sums up the stereotype of Volnay, although he insists the reality is more complicated. There is real diversity in the 527 acres encompassed by this village of some three hundred people, but the level of quality and consistency is almost unmatched in Burgundy, a region whose wines have sometimes reminded me of British sports cars of the sixties in their fickleness and undependability, although both are happily more predictable today than in years past.
Today it’s a given that the best wines here and everywhere else are estate bottled, produced, that is, by the people who grow the grapes, but through the nineteen twenties most of the grapes grown in Burgundy were sold to large negotiants who vinified and bottled the finished wine, frequently blending them with heartier wines from the sunny Rhône Valley and elsewhere. Guillaume’s grandfather Sem, infuriated by this practice, sued some of the large Beaune negotiants, who thereafter boycotted his grapes. As a result he became a leader of the estate-bottling movement in Burgundy, selling his wines in Paris and then, with the help of Frank Schoonmaker, in the States. Thanks to that connection, the d’Angerville Volnays have long been available here.
Sem d’Angerville was a painter and an engraver who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before inheriting the estate from an uncle. Along with the manor house, it included some of the best vineyards in Volnay, notably the Clos des Ducs, a dramatically sloping, southeast-facing plot enclosed within an ancient stone wall and blessed with a spring mid-slope, providing hydric relief in drought years such as 2003, when his grandson took over. (If you can find the 2003, buy it.) Clos des Ducs is one of the benchmark Burgundies, more powerful than the typical Volnay but more delicate than, say, a Chambertin, and is capable of aging and improving for decades. (A 1964 that Guillaume opened for me was sensational.) The other desert-island wine of the appellation would be Lafarge’s Clos des Chênes, from a midslope vineyard on the south side of the village, although there are many other excellent vineyards, and producers, in Volnay.
Hubert de Montille will be familiar to viewers of the film Mondovino as the crusty defender of old-school traditions and the scourge of alleged American critical influence on French wine making. His Volnays were indeed classical to the point of being austere, requiring decades to reveal their shy charms. Montille still totters around the village but finally turned over the reins to his son Étienne in 2001, and the latter has made these wines much more accessible without, so far as I can tell, resorting to any technological harlotry. The Premier Cru Taillepieds is the domaine’s signature wine.
The other big marquee in Volnay is Domaine de la Pousse d’Or, which made a name for itself in the last century under the leadership of Gérard Potel, who was the third driver in the car pool that transported young Guillaume and Frédéric, along with his own daughter, Agathe, to school in Beaune. Potel’s first vintage from the vineyard called Bousse d’Or, the 1964, is one of Burgundy’s modern legends. After his sudden death in 1997 the domaine went through a shaky period of experimentation, but it has recently recovered its form.
The 2009 vintage was a great one in Volnay, and throughout Burgundy, a real French kiss of a year, in which all but the top wines will be approachable and even wildly flirtatious on release, unlike the similarly heralded 2005, which at the moment is wearing a chastity belt. Even the basic Village wines—the ones labeled simply Volnay—are delicious, ripe, and complex. The 2008 isn’t quite as come-hither, although many connoisseurs love this vintage, and many winemakers feel that these wines, while slightly less ripe, are more nuanced and more reflective of their specific sites of origin, which is what we pay for in Burgundy.
Off the Main Drag: Savigny-lès-Beaune
Carved in stone above the doorway at Château de Savigny, and elsewhere in the little town of Savigny-lès-Beaune, is the motto “Les vins de Savigny sont nourrissants, théologiques et morbifuges.” I’m not certain what it means for a wine to be “theological”; “nourishing” seems like a comparatively safe and mundane claim. As for that last adjective, the Burgundy expert Jasper Morris suggests “it means either disease chasing or perhaps death defying.” Whatever it means, it’s a pretty grand claim for a wine that hasn’t had much hype in the years since that inscription was first chiseled in the seventeenth century. Savigny-lès-Beaune is one of the less celebrated appellations of Burgundy, in part because
the village is off the beaten path, located several kilometers from Route 74, the north-south artery of the Côte d’Or. This obscurity makes for some great values.
Directly across the street from the Château de Savigny, now an airplane and motorcycle museum, is the winery of Domaine Simon Bize, housed in a sprawling shed, presided over by fifty-something Patrick Bize, the diminutive, laconic fourth-generation proprietor. His great-grandfather founded the domaine in 1880, one of three consecutive Simon Bizes, and he inherited it, somewhat reluctantly, in 1972. “I didn’t even like wine,” he told me, “and I didn’t want to work in the vineyards or the cellar.” Fortunately, he grew to love his birthright, especially the vineyard work. He seems to know every vine on his patchwork, nearly fifty-acre domaine.
For many years, the Bize Savignys have been an insider’s secret for budget-conscious connoisseurs. Patrick isn’t prone to hype—he doesn’t say much of anything as he hands me samples of his 2009s from tank and cask, or later when we drink some older wines in front of a roaring fire in his office. When pressed about the 2009 vintage, about which most critics and winemakers are rapturous, he ventures only that “it’s a good vintage.”
Bize doesn’t do anything cutting-edge in the winery—vinification being pretty traditional and straightforward—but his yields are always well below those allowed by the authorities, which makes for wines with more concentration, and he’s willing to pick later than his neighbors and risk losing his crop to ensure ripeness. That wasn’t really a problem in the warm 2009 vintage, where even the basic Village wines from less-favored exposures got more than enough rays to ripen, and even Patrick’s less conscientious neighbors managed to produce some pretty voluptuous juice. That said, even in a hot vintage Patrick’s wines can be forbidding in their youth—especially the Premiers Crus—and generally need a few years of bottle age after release.
Traditionally, Savigny was known to produce a light and delicate red wine, and it cultivated this image to the point of blending white grapes in with the reds when the wines were too robust, according to the importer Peter Wasserman. In recent years, the reds have gained weight, in keeping with contemporary tastes, and white grapes, grown on the mostly limestone-rich sites, are vinified separately to create some tasty Burgundy and Savigny Blancs—not so surprising when you consider the proximity of the hill of Corton just north of the appellation, source of the majestic Corton-Charlemagne.
Another overachiever in the neighborhood is Domaine Pavelot, now run by Hugues Pavelot with plenty of help from his father, Jean-Marc, genial giants who tower above their neighbors and outperform most of them. Hugues, who did a stage in Australia before returning home, is the fourth generation of Pavelots to tend vines in Savigny. The Pavelots’ Dominode is often considered the first among the many Premiers Crus, although Bize’s Vergelesses, from a rocky, well-exposed vineyard at the north end of Savigny, vies with it for supremacy in the appellation.
The humble image of Savigny-lès-Beaune is slightly compromised by the presence of Domaine Chandon de Briailles, an eighteenth-century limestone manor house set within a small park laid out by the great landscape designer André Le Nôtre, who created the gardens of Versailles. Since 1834, the domaine has belonged to the noble de Nicolay family, but for much of the twentieth century it was neglected until Nadine de Nicolay moved down from Paris in 1984 to take charge. (She has since been joined by her children, Claude and François.) Knowing virtually nothing about viticulture or wine making, Nadine learned on the job, converting to organic and eventually biodynamic farming and transforming an undistinguished estate into a very good one. Although the domaine is probably best known for its Grand Cru Cortons, from the appellation just north of Savigny, it also makes several excellent Savigny-lès-Beaunes, including the Premier Cru Fourneaux and Lavières and a lighter Village red, all for less than the average Russian River Pinot Noir.
Savigny reds and whites represent very good value; while prices up and down the Côte d’Or took a big jump in 2009, you can find very good Village-level Savigny for $30, and the best Premiers Crus can be had for less than $60. There is, however, one notable exception to this rule. Those who feel uncomfortable drinking relatively inexpensive Burgundy will be happy to know that the renowned Domaine Leroy, based in Vosne-Romanée and owned by the dynamic, chic, and controversial Madame Bize-Leroy, makes a Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Narbantons that retails for several hundred dollars. It’s a very good wine, made from extremely low-yielding old vines. I recently tasted the 2006 and was impressed with what Bize-Leroy had achieved in a very difficult vintage, although some critics argue that the powerful, concentrated house style overrides nuances of the terroir. At the very least, I’d say it isn’t exactly a typical Savigny-lès-Beaune, but I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up if someone offered to pour me a glass.
Typically, Savigny is more Sunday-night-with-roast-chicken than let’s-impress-the-client, which is not to say that it’s simple. The better Savigny reds, particularly the Premiers Crus, can be extremely complex, and they can age and improve for years, even decades. The transplanted New Yorker Becky Wasserman, also known as the godmother of Burgundy, told me a story about entertaining a client at a restaurant in Bouilland, a few miles up the road from Savigny. The client had ordered a 1979 Jayer Vosne-Romanée Cros-Parantoux, a legendary wine from the most celebrated maker of the past century. Patrick Bize shambled over to their table and poured two glasses of something from a magnum for Wasserman and her client. “It just bloomed in the glass, and the bouquet became more and more heady,” Wasserman said. “The Jayer retreated. I finally asked Patrick what it was—a magnum of 1929 Bize, never moved from the cellar.”
Peasants and Plutocrats: La Paulée de New York
“What I love about Burgundy is the authenticity,” says Daniel Johnnes, the hyperactive, diminutive dean of American Burgundy geeks, over an omelet at Balthazar in SoHo. “You meet a Burgundy grower, they’re farmers, they spend half the day on their tractors. You shake their hands and they are calloused. When you meet a château owner in Bordeaux, his hands are smooth and he’s wearing a foulard.” As generalizations go, this one is pretty accurate and helps explain how special this region is for Johnnes, a self-professed “working guy” whose family were union organizers and whose father took him to protest marches in the sixties.
Two days after our lunch, he welcomed more than thirty Burgundian winemakers to New York for the tenth La Paulée de New York, and more than a few of them looked as if they’d just climbed off a tractor. Not the least interesting aspect of the event was the reverence with which these French farmers were received by several hundred of America’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens, more than a few of whom travel in private jets and chauffeured Maybachs, and all of whom had paid twelve hundred bucks for dinner.
Johnnes modeled his New York celebration on La Paulée de Meursault, which was founded in 1923 when the vigneron Jules Lafon gathered his neighbors for a fall feast to celebrate the harvest. (Jules’s grandson Dominique was on hand for the 2010 New York Paulée—one of the most cosmopolitan vignerons in the group.) Johnnes first fell in love with French food and wine when he lived in France as a student in the seventies. Originally, he studied cooking but eventually turned his attention to wine, becoming sommelier at Drew Nieporent’s Montrachet, in what was then the wasteland of Tribeca. With its mix of casual downtown ambience and sophisticated cuisine, the restaurant helped reshape the concept of fine dining in Manhattan, and Johnnes had a significant impact on the emerging American wine scene. The list was devoted to Burgundy, and Johnnes began traveling to the source, the fabled Côte d’Or. In 1989 he invited a few of his favorite Burgundy makers to New York. “It was kind of wild. Most of them had never been to the States,” he says. “I think two of them had never been on a plane.” He continued to invite Burgundian vignerons to meet American oenophiles at Montrachet, and in 2000 he launched his New York tribute to La Paulée de Meursault, an event that has become an institution in the wine world, the
annual American gathering of Burgundy nuts.
Actually, “nuts” might be overly kind. You have to be more than a little mad, and more than a bit of a masochist, to love Burgundy. Johnnes, with his infallible good cheer and his deep reserves of common sense, is probably the exception, although even he compares the search for great Burgundy to the quest for the holy grail. It’s a fickle and unreliable lover, its mood and complexion seeming to change from one bottle to the next. Burgundy is like the girl with the curl in the nursery rhyme. When she’s good, she’s very, very good, and when she’s bad, she’s horrid. Case in point, the La Paulée collectors’ dinner, an intimate $3,750-a-head feast that preceded the main event and featured wines dating back to 1966, none of which cost less than four figures per bottle and many of which were no fun to drink. The evening, which I attended thanks to the generosity of a friend—and her husband’s illness—reminded me of the old Richard Pryor joke that cocaine is God’s way of telling you you have too much money. The same might be said of old Grand Cru Burgundy. What’s even crazier is that most of the participants weren’t even shocked—Burgnuts being used to having their hearts trampled on, a price they’re happy to pay for the moments of rapture and ecstasy.
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