2019 Aloxe-Corton Village

The last port of call during my five-week tasting marathon in the Côte d’Or was most apt. It was not our first encounter but definitely our first visit. Faure is a young winemaker, someone who is clearly at home out in the vines whatever the weather. In conversation, he is not initially voluble, but nor is he one of those Burgundy vignerons who barely utters a word. Faure is clearly principled and passionate about this work, scratching together tiny parcels, less than a hectare in total, in less fashionable vineyards. Most importantly, he is creating wines that you ought to know about. Though he looks Burgundy through and through, in fact, Faure was born in Blaye on the “wrong side” of the Gironde estuary. His parents were wine merchants. Happenstance bought him to Burgundy, where Faure told them that he wished to pursue winemaking so he embarked upon wine studies in Beaune and after working at Fromm in New Zealand, he spent five years on the tractor at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It was in Vosne-Romanée that he met his wife, Amélie Berthaut (see Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet). They live together in a house in Meuilley, up in the Hautes-Côtes that he bought in 2013. “It had not been inhabited since the Second World War,” Faure tells me. “There was no electricity or running water and barely a roof.”

That same year Faure started making wine under his own name with tiny parcels in the Hautes-Côtes, some en friche (uncultivated with vines) plus a couple en fermage. He splits his time tending his own vines and managing the vineyards at Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet. Faure’s approach is lutte raisonée. All his reds contain 100% stems simply because he does not own a de-stemmer. Space is at a premium in his ‘cosy’ winery that occupies the basement under his house, which means that he must rack out of barrel and transfer into tank or bottle before the following year’s harvest. “I started picking the 2019s on 10 September and finished on 25 September with the Aligoté. I prefer 2017 and 2019 to 2018,” he opined, as we tasted his more recent crop. I really loved these wines. They felt natural in the sense of not being pushed or moulded into something they are not and, like Boris Champy, his wines give notice that the higher and cooler microclimates in the Hautes-Côtes should be taken more seriously. Likewise, he is another winemaker who is showing that Aligoté can give old Chardonnay a run for its money. Faure is definitely a name to keep an eye on.