Domaine Faiveley’s Corton Clos des Cortons Faiveley: 1986-2015

BY STEPHEN TANZER | MARCH 21, 2019 

You know something is out of the ordinary about Domaine Faiveley’s Clos des Cortons simply by the way this Côte de Beaune Grand Cru is presented in a line-up of barrel samples at the winery: it comes at the end, after a progression of Grand Crus from the Côte de Nuits culminating with Faiveley’s Chambertin-Clos de Bèze. (One occasional exception is Faiveley’s tiny quantity of Musigny, a wine that has been presented last in recent years, if it’s shown it at all). The simple explanation for holding the Clos des Cortons until the end is that it’s typically a massive wine with uncommon power, density and breadth. This is a bottling that I have often described as having the tannic structure of a Pauillac and that CEO/Managing Director Erwan Faiveley describes, perhaps with slight overstatement, as “the only Burgundy wine that a winemaker in Bordeaux can understand.”

Happily, numerous improvements made by the new regime at Faiveley over the last 12 to 15 years have domesticated the wine’s tannic ferocity and brought its fruit and finesse to the fore. These qualities were made clear during a vertical tasting I conducted at Faiveley’s newly renovated facilities in Nuits-Saint-Georges in December with Erwan Faiveley and Technical Director/Head Winemaker Jérôme Flous, who have piloted this transition.

Seven Generations of Faiveleys

Pierre Faiveley, a cobbler by trade, founded Maison Joseph Faiveley in 1825 in his home town of Nuits-Saint-Georges, naming the company after his son, who was two years old at the time. (The family’s first acquisition of vineyards was in Nuits-Saint-Georges Tribourg in 1832). Joseph took over the firm in 1860, bringing with him a number of vineyard parcels inherited from his uncle. He ran the company for more than 50 years, directing the purchase of top Premier Crus vineyards in Nuits-Saint-Georges as well as the Clos des Cortons in 1873. Joseph’s son François, who predeceased his father, spent much of his time with the company helping the family recover from the phylloxera epidemic that required all of their vineyards to be replanted, beginning in the waning years of the 19th century and lasting well into the 20th century.

Faiveley's new cuverie

François’s son Georges ran the family firm beginning in 1919. In addition to being responsible for adding significant vineyard holdings, including Faiveley’s Grand Crus in Gevrey-Chambertin, Georges was the founder, with his friend Camille Rodier, of The Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, the wine society with headquarters in the Château de Clos de Vougeot and chapters around the world. Georges Faiveley was also responsible for signing a 30-year lease on multiple vineyard parcels in the Côte Chalonnaise that his son Guy eventually purchased when the lease expired in 1963. In turn, Guy’s son François, passionate about wine from a very early age, joined the family business in 1976 at the age of 25 and subsequently expanded the family’s vineyard holdings. Over the same period he was an active shareholder in the family’s Faiveley Transport firm (established in 1919), which grew dramatically in the 1980s as it signed major contracts to supply brakes, doors and other key train parts to France’s TGV service, as well as to train systems around the world. (The American manufacturer Wabtec purchased a controlling stake in Faiveley’s company in 2016, although the Faiveley family remains the largest single shareholder).

Erwan Faiveley, who arrived in Nuits-Saint-Georges for the harvest of 2004 and soon decided to stay, represents the seventh generation at Domaine Faiveley. Once Erwan concluded that the family wine business was his future, his father François decided to move to Switzerland and to devote more time to running his other business interests (and to enjoying his boat), and so Erwan took over as Chairman and General Manager of the family’s wine operations at the age of 25. In early 2006, Erwan brought in Bernard Hervet, who had just left his CEO position at Bouchard Père et Fils, initially for advice on a labeling issue (at the time, the Faiveley family had never denoted Domaine Faiveley on their labels) and to observe the 2006 harvest. It quickly became clear that Hervet, who had previously guided Bouchard Père & Fils (and Domaine William Fèvre in Chablis, which the Joseph Henriot family bought in 1998, just three years after purchasing Bouchard), had the perfect background of tasting skill and managerial experience to help Faiveley achieve his objective of making Burgundies with more silkiness and refinement. Hervet subsequently served as a consultant—and putative General Manager—from 2007 through 2015, even running the company for 18 months during 2010 and 2011 when Erwan took time off to get an M.B.A. at Columbia University in New York City.

Clos des Cortons in autumn