In July of 2014 Joseph Voillot died in the house he grew up in, just in front of Volnay’s thirteenth-century church. Joseph was a vigneron through and through, the fourth generation of his family to manage the estate, and he represented the old breed of Burgundian growers. On the day of his funeral, Volnay overflowed with those paying homage.

He wasn’t the first Joseph Voillot, however; that honor goes to his great-great-grandfather, the Joseph who founded the domaine in the 1840s, farming various crops, sharecropping vineyard parcels, and maintaining a few vines of his own. His son Jean-Baptiste subsequently added several parcels, including Clos Micault in 1870, increasing the total to over seven acres. The third generation, Marius, added Volnay Fremiets, Pommard Rugiens, and Meursault Les Cras (and probably inherited vines through his marriage to Céline Rossignol). Their son was the second Joseph Voillot, who added yet more parcels to the stable. By 1957, one-third of the production was domaine-bottled, the rest sold to the négoce.

The second Joseph had three daughters, none of whom wanted to follow in his footsteps. Thus his son-in-law Jean-Pierre Charlot (photo to the right) came to join him. Like Joseph, Jean-Pierre was steeped in Burgundian culture. His father managed grower relations and wine selections for the then family négociante firm of Bouchard Père et Fils. Jean-Pierre got a degree in enology, embarked on a stint as a courtier, or local broker, of wine in Beaune, and fell in love with one of Joseph’s three daughters. He went on to teach winemaking at Beaune’s viticultural school while working with Joseph for fifteen years until the latter’s retirement in 1995, at which point Jean-Pierre took over. During his tenure, additional fermenting tanks were purchased, all of the domaine’s production was bottled, export markets were opened, and the parcel of Beaune Coucherias was acquired. Above all, he refined his father-in-law’s style, earning the domaine an enduring reputation for wines of traditional elegance and breed. Jean-Pierre retired in 2019.

Like Joseph before him, Jean-Pierre had no heirs. The uncertainty of what might happen ended when his nephew Etienne Chaix (photo to the right) joined him in 2016. Etienne is Joseph’s grandson and represents the 6th generation of the family. He stopped all use of herbicides in the vines and went to using Diam corks, but beyond that hasn’t changed much. The farming is sustainable, with cover crop allowed over winter and weed control undertaken by shallow plowing in summer. All vines are hand harvested and all the grapes are de-stemmed. Initial fermentations happen without yeast additions in concrete and stainless steel tanks, and the use of new wood during élevage remains 10-20% for the premier crus; less for villages; none for the Bourgogne (but which is raised in barrel). The wines are not fined and are only lightly filtered, if at all, at bottling.

Today the domaine farms vines spread across Volnay and Pommard, along with the parcel in Beaune Coucherias. All of the Villages parcels are farmed the same, and all of the premier cru parcels are treated the same; ditto for how these wines are treated in the cellar. The differences come from the sites.

In 2001 and 2004, many of those parcels were badly hailed, and this was repeated, stunningly, in 2012, 2013, and 2014. Those last three years saw hail coming in June or July and flaying the same swath of land from Meursault to Beaune, a consecutive cataclysm never before recorded. Crop loss averaged as high as fifty percent. Following that third hailstorm, Jean-Pierre sold the family holding in Volnay’s Les Brouillards, and now the domaine’s total vineyard surface is nine hectares, or just over twenty-two acres.

In the early morning of April 27, 2016, the worst frost in seventeen years descended upon Burgundy and the domaine lost well over 50% of its crop. What kept morale up was Etienne’s coming on board, thus ensuring that the domaine would remain in the family.

Etienne’s first “official” vintage was the 2019, which, although short in crop, was quite an auspicious start for this dedicated young man.

-Roy Cloud, owner of Vintage '59, www.vintage59.com

Christoph Wachter began working at his family winery in 2008 when he was just twenty years old. He took over full responsibility in 2010, and now farms sixteen hectares of vineyards in Südburgenland, in the towns of Eisenberg and Deutsch Schützen. His credo, “Wine is the most interesting, natural and authentic when you recognize its origin. After that, all of our efforts are aligned - and so our grapes grow as close to nature and with as little outside influence as possible. The character comes entirely from the soils of Deutsch-Schützen and Eisenberg.”

When Wachter started in 2010, he stopped using herbicides and pesticides entirely. Today, he is one of only three producers in Südburgenland who is farming organically and is certified as of the 2018 vintage. In 2012, he studied biodynamic farming for two years and he applies some biodynamic techniques today. He allows the weeds to grow in his vineyards, as they attract beneficial insects and eventually return to the soil as nutrients themselves. Rather than add fertilizer, he leaves the vines to extract what they need from the soil itself, thus instilling the wines with minerality and allowing them to express their unique terroir. Only native yeasts are used in the cellar. Wachter ferments his wines twenty to thirty percent whole-cluster, and ages in large barrels that allow the wines to mature gracefully without obscuring them with oak flavors.

The wines of Eisenberg / Sudburgenland are very unique expressions of Blaufrankisch grown on green schist; most Blaufrankisch comes from the limestone soils of Mittelburgenland. The biggest difference between Burgenland and Südburgenland is the soil and micro-climate. In Südburgenland, the vines grow in primary rock, and the most prized terroir is the green schist of the Eisenberg hill, regarded as one of the finest sites for producing Blaufränkisch in Austria, giving wines of great finesse and focus. The Eisenberg DAC includes wines from the surrounding villages, including Deutsch-Schutzen, where you find iron rich loam and clay on top of the green schist subsoil. Deutsch-Schützen’s soils are dense with a deep layer of loam, resulting in dark and spicy wines with soft tannins. Südburgenland is cooler than Mittelburgenland and there are rolling hillsides, small mountains really, called the pre-Alps, topped with forest; this regulates the temperature, another aspect of the micro-climate of Südburgenland. Harvest here tends to start two weeks after Mittelburgenland. Sudburgenland, with 500 hectares planted is considerably smaller compared to Mittelburgenland with 2,100 hectares.

With the 2017 vintage, Christoph launced an idea that he'd had in mind for a few years. In addition to his single vineyard wines, he now bottles two village level wines, one from Deutsch Schützen and one from Eisenberg. And he makes four single-vineyard wines: Weinberg, Ratschen, Eisenberg Saybritz, and Eisenberg Reihberg. His cuvee Bela-Joska remains the flagship of the winery. It's named after his two grand-fathers and the cuvee was first bottled in 1992. The Wachter-Wiesler wines are some of the most exciting red wines made in Austria today. Wachter-Wiesler wines have silky texture, floral aromatics, great energy, and elegance - truly Blaufränkisch at its finest.

The history at White Rock Vineyards extends back to the 1870s, when one Dr. Pettingill established one of the earliest vineyard plantings in Napa Valley. Like many seminal California wineries, it changed ownership several times over the years, endured prohibition, fell out of production, had the vineyards pulled out, and finally ended up used for something else entirely (horse training grounds). Luckily, this was not the end of the White Rock story.

In 1977, over 100 years after its founding, Henri and Claire Vandendriessche purchased the property; they replanted the vineyards soon after and spent nearly a decade selling their fruit to other wineries. In 1986, however, they produced their first vintage and have produced continually since then. In the late 1990s, the second generation took up the reins — their son Michael—who, after studying viticulture in Napa, spent two years in France exploring other passions before returning to White Rock to take over vineyard management. In 1999 he was joined by his brother Christopher, who took over winemaking after working in Bordeaux, Rioja, and Mendoza, and spending two years learning under Napa legend John Kongsgaard as assistant winemaker at Luna.

Situated on the eastern side of the valley at 300 feet elevation, the vines grow in the austere, white volcanic soils that are responsible for their distinctive wines, and are also the winery’s namesake. The 35-acre vineyard has always been farmed naturally, without chemical treatments and using cover crops such as bell beans, rye, and clover to enrich the soils. Today the vines are an average age of 30 years, comprised of 14 acres of Chardonnay on the cooler benchland and 22 acres of terraced Bordeaux varieties on the slopes above.

Winemaking favors minimal new oak and native fermentations. Their goal has, from the start, been to produce the kind balanced, age-worthy wines that Napa Valley was once legendary for, and time has shown that they’ve succeeded; the wines are elegant and classic. They have persisted and thrived independently of the trends that have come and gone over the past three decades; they are the embodiment of a singular place. Such careful stewards as the Vandendriessche family are a rare thing indeed, and we are extremely excited to have White Rock Vineyards in our portfolio.

White Rock Vineyards is a Napa Green Certified Vineyard and Winery.

Xavier Barbet and his brother Nicolas Barbet, manage this Moulin-a-Vent winery together. The fruit comes from four-hectares spread over several parcels - Champs de Cour, La Roche, le Moulin, le Clos, Perreins and Brouilleres. The grapes are mostly destemmed and fermentation happens in large conical-shaped (tronconique) wooden fermenters and some are placed in cement tronconique tanks. The tronconique shape gives more skin contact for a long and slow extraction. Fermentation lasts seven to ten days and is followed by a maceration totalling four weeks. Next the wines go by gravity into barrels and demi-muids, new to eight years old for aging. Moulin-a-Vent is considered to be the richest Cru in Beaujolais and the longest lived.