Domaine Pierre Matrot

The Matrot domaine is one of the oldest estate-bottlers in Burgundy and one of the largest and most important properties in Meursault. It is widely represented on the wine lists of France’s greatest restaurants, and has been distributed in the United States for over thirty years. Thierry Matrot and his wife, Pascale, are the owners.  The domaine farms about three-quarters of its 45 acres, some of the finest vineyards in the heart of Burgundy.  The average age of the vines is an impressive 30 years.

Thierry Matrot works towards the achievement of one major goal:  to produce a wine that retains its elegance while maximizing both the fruit and the native tang of the soil. In order to accomplish this goal, he relies upon his winemaking philosophy: “Wine is made in the vineyards – and far less than people think - in the cellar. However talented the oenologist, with poor raw materials he is lost before he has even started." 100% estate-bottling has been practiced at the domaine since Thierry’s grandfather, Joseph Matrot, took it over in 1908.  Today, Thierry partners in the business and winemaking of the domaine with his two daughters, Adèle and Elsa.

Situated south of Dijon in the département of Côte-d’Or, Meursault is a Burgundian village in the heart of the Côte de Beaune and famous for its great white wines and its subtle, tender and elegant reds. It has a population of 1,600 inhabitants and a surface area of 1,622 ha, 1,005 of which are AOC vineyards (appellations of controlled origin) and planted with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Aligoté vines.  The Matrot and Loiselet families (Jeanne, Joseph Matrot's daughter) are the owners of the wine estate made up of 22,5863 ha of vineyards in the communes of MEURSAULT, PULIGNY-MONTRACHET, AUXEY-DURESSES, MONTHELIE and MARANGES.

A wine must be the reflection of its terroir and its vintage. The first step in preserving all of the different characteristics of my wines is to carry out careful and attentive work in the vineyards. During the sixties, the Domaines Matrot did not escape the “chemical years” in winegrowing. It was not until my arrival on the estate in 1976 that chemical fertilisers were abandoned and replaced by organic products. It was at the same time that my father and myself started to introduce a so-called reasoned approach to winegrowing (“lutte raisonnée” in French), which means adjusting the products and their dosage to the disease which needs to be treated. 

It was as a result of a natural and progressive process that I began cultivating all of the vineyards of Domaines Matrot organically in the year 2000. We grow the vines with the greatest respect for the soils using organic manure and ploughing them. Rigorous pruning and disbudding in the spring help to control the yields. If necessary, we carry out a green harvest before the veraison (before the grapes change their colour). We carefully monitor their sanitary state, the yields as well as their maturity in order to decide on the best date for the harvest. We all know that only ripe grapes can produce high quality wines.

All of these cultivation techniques as well as the respect for the soils and for the vines confer purity of the fruit and the character of the terroir to our wines. The controls are just as numerous during vinification. We exercise extreme care as regards barrel hygiene and temperature control during fermentation. We enjoy long and uneventful fermentations for eight to ten weeks.  We also check the quality of the lees which accompany the wine during the maturing process and adjust the “bâtonnage” (stirring up of the lees) according to each vintage.