Vincent BACHELET

Vincent Bachelet - VignArtea

BURGUNDY 17 ha     SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE     WINEMAKER : Vincent BACHELET


ESTATE HISTORY


The BACHELET family has been winegrowers from father to son for four generations. As the children became independent, the vineyards were divided up.
Vincent BACHELET is Bernard Bachelet's son. He worked on the family estate with his brothers until 2008, when he took off and set up his own business in the heart of Chassagne-Montrachet, in a large wine merchant's building with a cellar featuring 17th century Sisterscian vaults.
He now cultivates 17 hectares of vines made up of Pinot Noir (60%), Chardonnay (33%) and Aligoté (7%). He is assisted by his son Etienne, while his daughter Aurore has bought a beautiful estate on the heights of Santenay where she has been producing her own cuvées since 2019.



WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING


In the vineyards, they practise integrated or intelligent viticulture. This system means that treatments are only applied in the event of serious cryptogamic disease outbreaks, while allowing very natural protection of the vines the rest of the time. It's a flexible method that's not based on systematic control, and it produces a healthy harvest and quality grapes.

There is a high proportion of old vines, and yields are controlled to obtain concentrated, juicy, and high-quality grapes. The grapes are harvested by hand, and the care taken at that step means that the winemaking process can be done naturally, with a low human intervention.

All the wines are matured in oak barrels, with a small proportion of new barrels. During the ageing phase, they are regularly tasted, analysed and monitored by the oenology laboratory to avoid any risk of pitting or aromatic deviations.



TERROIR


The vineyards of the Vincent BACHELET estate extend over the villages of Maranges, Santenay, Chassagne-Montrachet, Saint-Aubin and Meursault in the Côte de Beaune, with a small enclave on the Côte de Nuits in the Gevrey-Chambertin designation.

The 'Côte Bourguignonne' owes its origins to the building of the Alpine chain, which began almost 600 million years ago. Its old underlying bedrock could not withstand the gigantic stresses of the Alpine mechanics created by the clash of drifting continental plates.
The future Côte-d'Or (Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits) experienced the first effects of this in the form of longitudinal shearing parallel to the north-south and north-east-south-west directions.

Since the Tertiary period, the whole area has been subjected to new pressure, bending along south-east-north-west axes. The indurated bedrock is covered by a blanket of sedimentary rock that has been subjected to the ravages of erosion throughout recent geological history. This has given rise to anticlinal valley, with gently sloping detrital cones at their mouths, covering the different geological levels.

At the end of the Eocene, 40 million years ago, and as soon as the emersions on either side were prolonged, the trench was gradually filled in by successive deposits of rocky debris, torn from its margins and accumulated over a thousand metres thick.

This complex geological structure accounts for much of the originality of Burgundy's vineyards, but other factors such as the nature and distribution of the cones of rocky debris that have accumulated since the end of the Tertiary period (10 million years ago) have a clear influence on the behaviour of the vines through the water they store and the mineral salts they extract.

The Côte de Beaune vineyards begin in Ladoix on the Corton mountain, where the Upper Jurassic (161 to 145 million years ago) appears. It ends south of Volnay where, from Meursault onwards, we find the Middle Jurassic (-175 to -161 my).
This part of the coast is characterised by the extent of marl outcrops, unlike the Côte de Nuits where they are rare. This can be explained by the presence of deeper seas in the Middle Jurassic whose slow retreat favoured marl-type sedimentation.
The tectonic movement that created the two undulations of the Gevrey anticline and the Volnay syncline caused the Middle Jurassic to sink from Ladoix onwards, with the Upper Jurassic outcropping in the northern part of the Côte de Beaune (as far as Volnay), before the Middle Jurassic reappeared from Meursault to Chassagne. Geologists refer to this area as the Côte des Blancs, due to the presence of the marl so important to the Chardonnay grape variety.

In the most southern part of the Chassagne-Montrachet village, but especially in Santenay and the Maranges vineyards, we find marls from the Lias (Lower Jurassic, -199 to -175 my) and the Trias (-251 to -199 my).


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