Domaine Chavy-Chouet

Two families, two villages on the Côte d’Or linked by a love for terroir over seven generations… After six years at a specialist winemaking school and with plenty of experience in winegrowing and vinification around the world under his belt, Romaric has given the estate a makeover. He has been running it single-handedly since 2006, watching over his 15 hectares of vines with a rigorous eye. He is proud of his roots, and his approach combines rigor, tradition, and innovation.

Romaric has dedicated his life to winegrowing with a free-spirited, intense, and dynamic approach.

His ambition is to produce top-flight wines that reflect the very essence of their appellations, namely Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Saint-Aubin, Volnay, and Pommard.

From “simple” Burgundies to village wines and up to premier crus, his plots across these appellations are nurtured with the same care and attention, with the utmost respect for nature.

The highlight of each year, after 12 months of hard work, worries, and excitement, is the satisfaction of harvesting healthy and well-balanced grapes, which naturally result in fine, pure, and gastronomic wines.

Like our Cistercian predecessors, our devotion to winegrowing is total. The golden rule is to never cut corners on the creation of a great wine.

Day after day, and season after season, every act, everything we do is guided by our pursuit of excellence. This ambition forces us to be very attentive and caring with regard to our vines. It also means that we visit and revisit each individual vine up to 12 times every year.

Our ecological aims are translated into meticulous daily efforts that have replaced herbicides over the past 30 years. The only products we use on our land are sulfur and copper, to protect, strengthen and help our plants give the very best of themselves.

Romaric’s wines are a reflection of the man himself. They are imprinted with sensitivity, character, and rigor.

He is extremely attentive of his vines and the fruit they bear, and his approach to vinification is painstaking and precise, without artifice.

The winery covers 1,300 m², including 800 m² of cellars, and is a mix of ancient and ultra-modern. The set-up allows him to work hand-in-hand with nature in a well-managed yet pleasant environment, and to meet his very high demands in terms of quality. The wines are put into barrels using gravity, intervention is kept to a minimum, and an irreproachable attitude to cleanliness also symbolize his quest for excellence in the shape of pure and balanced wines that burst with energy.

For centuries, Burgundian winegrowers have opted for those varietals that most accurately transcribe the identity, strength, and originality of each terroir. Our 15 hectares, spread across 14 appellations, are clearly expressed through the wines they produce.

The whites offer purity, elegance, minerality, freshness, and precision, while the reds offer structure, finesse, fruit, and strength.

Vintage 2016

2016 was a fairly early year, after a wet winter. The sun shone during budburst but the cold returned in April, making life hard for us. Two nights of below-freezing temperatures meant we lost 30% of the harvest to frost.

This caused a lot of anxiety amongst winegrowers and was a big blow to morale so early on in the year.

The sun returned and held tight for a large part of the season. The grapes that survived benefited from a great deal of attention and ripened in moderate temperatures until 22 September, when the harvest began.

A relatively late harvest in cold weather, followed by ageing in cellars that had also cooled down, meant that fermentation lasted for several months and it took a long time for the wines to reveal their true characters.

The whites are powerful with acidity and lots of purity, and the way the terroir can be read through the wines is staggering. Each terroir is extremely well defined and on tasting, true to itself.

The reds are supple and very fruity, but they also have body. They are remarkably well balanced and are deep ruby red in color. They were already charming when it came to bottling, and they will evolve into pure and precise wines with good keeping potential.

Vintage 2015

2015 was an early year, due to a warm winter and sunny spring. Budburst, leaf development, and flowering all occurred a month ahead of usual.

The summer was also hot and the plants suffered from hydric stress, which upset ripening as photosynthesis couldn’t occur due to the lack of water.

We were delighted that there was virtually no disease. There is nothing like bringing a perfectly healthy harvest into the cellar, knowing that you’ve already avoided 90% of the problems that could occur during vinification due to quality issues with the grapes.

It wasn’t until early August that we had any significant rain, and then the sun returned once more. Ripening then accelerated and we had to bring our start date forward by a week, given how fast the grapes reached maturity. The ripeness of the grapes was very even across all plots and we harvested for five days starting on 30 August with 50 skilled pickers.

Our decisions paid off and as a result, the whites preserved all their natural acidity and aromatic freshness. The reds enjoyed a couple more days of sunshine before being gently vinified, their essence extracted through pumping over with no pigeages. They are suave and ripe, with aromas of black berries and broad, enchanting tannins.