2020 Maison en Belles Lies Lies Maranges 1er Cru Les Clos Roussots
WINEMAKER: Pierre Fenals
REGION: Burgundy, FR
VARIETAL: Pinot Noir
VITICULTURE: Organic/Biodynamic
Les Clos Roussots is the continuation of Santenay’s ‘Clos Rousseau’. Planted by massale selection over 60 years ago lower on the slope where the mix of clay and limestone marl produce reds of finesse. Pierre’s typical red fermentation management with 100% whole bunches. Gentle pressing before 14 months on lees in 3-year-old barriques. A light sulphuring at bottling. A classy Maranges with a perfumed nose, finely structured with ample dark fruits, wood spices, plum, dried herbs and a saline minerality.
On the surface the story of Pierre Fenals may look like a well-trodden path – successful Parisian turns to making wine on reaching middle age - but as with his wines, the incredible detail tells a different story. Pierre studied microbiology at university but came to work in the business side of Parisian fashion. His scientific brain never stopped working, and by chance, in 1985 he bought a book of Rudolph Steiner’s teachings in a Parisian flea market. Upon reading it he felt he needed to explain Steiner’s teachings with science some day; they baffled him. Long before biodynamics was a buzzword, Pierre and his father-in-law set about farming cows to test and eventually prove the rhythms of Steiner’s teachings. | Paris had cultivated Pierre with a taste for the finer things and he became what the French call an amateur du vin or wine lover. Seeing the writing on the wall as an aging man in the eternally youthful world of fashion, he undertook a degree in oenology and in 2002, aged 52 and he and his wife sold their home in Paris and moved to Burgundy. Pierre began life as a vigneron working as a labourer in the vineyards of biodynamic producers Louis Trapet and Emmanuel Giboulot in Burgundy, as well as Lapierre in Beaujolais.
In 2008 Pierre bought an old warehouse with a huge, deep cellar in Saint-Aubin, a village already home to natural producers Dominique Derain and Jean-Jacques Morel. Shortly after he purchased his first 2.5 ha of vineyards in Maranges and Haute Côtes de Beaune. Today he owns around 4ha of vineyards and rents another 3ha to produce across 10 appellations from (not-so) simple Bourgogne Aligoté through to the Grand Cru Corton-Charlemagne.