History
The origins of the Mommessin négociant business date back to 1865 when Jean-Marie Mommessin, originally of Oyé in the Charollais, set up a business specialising in marc and other alcohols in the Mâconnais. Turning to wine in the 1920s, his son Joanny set about acquiring vineyards in Pouilly-Fuissé and in the Beaujolais. In 1932, in the middle of an economic crisis which had affected the wine trade as much as everything else, his attention was drawn by a broker he often used to use, a M. Cyrot, to the forthcoming sale of the de Blic wine domaine. This consisted of the Château de Pommard, vines in Pommard, Rugiens, Clos-Saint-Denis, Chambertin and Clos de Tart. On Tuesday 25 October he found himself at the town-hall in Morey. No one else was interested in the Clos de Tart (the Clos Saint-Denis and Chambertin vines were acquired by the Groffier family and the Château de Pommard by that of Laplanche) and so Mommessin was able to buy the Clos de Tart without having to undergo a Dutch auction. The price was 400,000 Francs, equivalent to roughly one million Francs today.
The vineyard, neglected by Chauvenet, was in disarray. "I remember we only made 11 barrels in 1933," said the 99 year old Henri Mommessin, son of Joanny, when I last made a comprehensive tasting of the wines in1997. Mommessin engaged Cyrot, already régisseur here and at the Château de Pommard at the time of the Blics, as his local manager, and two of the seven or so hectares were replanted in 1935. Cyrot was succeeded by his deputy Alfred Seguin in 1965, Seguin by Henri Perraut on his retirement four years later, and Perraut by Sylvain Pitiot in 1996.
The Mommessin family divided their vineyard and merchant business activities in the 1990s. Though they sold the latter to Boisset the Clos de Tart remains firmly their own, divided between the successors of the three children of Joanny Mommessin. For a decade or so Clos de Tart was sold through Boisset, but since 2007 it has been sold independently, with some 20 percent going direct to French private customers.
by Clive Coates MW