Domaine MAILLARD Père & Fils - Bourgogne

Domaine MAILLARD Père & Fils - VignArtea

BURGUNDY    CÔTE DE BEAUNE    19 ha    Sustainable Agriculture    WINEMAKER: MAILLARD Family


ESTATE HISTORY


Located in Chorey-Lès-Beaune, the MAILLARD estate was created in 1952 by Daniel MAILLARD, whose family has been growing vines since 1766. His two sons, Alain and Pascal, have now taken over the reins of the estate.

The vineyard covers 19 hectares, spread over 17 designations of the Côte de Beaune. It is one of the very first Burgundy estates I worked with, and whose wines seduced me by their irreproachable gustatory quality.
What I like about their wines is that they can be drunk young, the tannins are silky and smooth, and they have an excellent cellar potential: they can easily reach 10-15 years of ageing when stored in good conditions.



TERROIR


The Côte de Beaune begins in Ladoix with the Corton mountain, where the geological layers of the Upper Jurassic appear, and it ends south of Volnay, where, from Meursault onwards, we find the geological layers of the Middle Jurassic.

Generally speaking, the Côte de Beaune's terroir is characterised by large marly outcrops, in total contrast to the Côte de Nuits where the latters appear in a very limited and localised way.

These thick marl layerswere deposited when the region was entirely covered by deep seas during the Jurassic period. Their slow and gradual retreat may have favoured a very diverse marl sedimentation depending on the sector: between Ladoix and Meursault, the Côte des Beaune is made up of marl-limestone soils dating from the Oxfordian (Upper Jurassic) and dominated by a regular and continuous layer of limestone that can be seen at the top of the Corton moutain. The nature of the Oxfordian layers varies strongly and brutally from one plot to another and provides the Côte de Beaune with a great diversity of soils.

With the play of faults, exposures and altitudes, the nature of the subsoil composes an extraordinary mosaic of climates whose characteristics are found in the wines typicity.



WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING


Both in the vineyard and in the cellar, the Maillard estate has remained very traditional in their winegrowing and winemaking méthods. I have classified the estate in the Sustainable Agriculture category because the MAILLARD family does not systematically treat the vines, they only use synthetic products when necessary.

The estate could very easily obtain the Organic Agriculture label, but the MAILLARD family does not wish to do so in order to be able to remain free to move about: the climatic difficulties encountered in recent years seem to rule in their favour, as many winegrowers had to sacrifice their AB certification to save their harvest.

The grapes are harvested manually and are picked plot by plot. They are meticulously sorted before being pressed for the white varieties, or partially or totally destemmed for the red varieties.

For the fermentations, the estate works with indigenous yeasts and bacteria. The red grapes are macerated for 12 to 20 days, during which time the colour and tannins are gently extracted by punching down. The must is then pressed and the juice is racked into 228-litre Burgundy barrels where it is aged for 12 to 20 months depending on the designation. Some of the barrels are new, the proportion varying according to the year and the designation. The white wines are made directly in oak barrels, the proportion of new barrels also varies, as it does for the red wines.

Once the maturing process is over, the must is generally not filtered so as not to "slim" it and to allow it to continue to gently mature in bottle.


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