Domaine De La Pousse D'or

Look up from the plain which lies below the village of Volnay, surrounded by its vines in the middle of the Côte de Beaune, and one building sticks out. This is the imposing headquarters of the Domaine de la Pousse d'Or.

What is now the 17 hectare Domaine de la Pousse d'Or has its nucleus in two domaines which were grouped together in 1964. It was then 13 ha. and the land comprised several of the choicest parcels, all of them of significant area, of these two long-standing estates, whose histories can be traced back into the 18th century or beyond. It was created through the efforts of one of France's leading amateur gastronomes and oenophiles of the post-war era, and had at its helm from then until his untimely death in 1997, in Gérard Potel, one of Burgundy's most respected wine-makers.

Subsequently the Domaine de la Pousse d'Or was acquired by Patrick Landanger, a businessman involved in the manufacture of surgical and orthopaedic instruments. He had originnaly only been interested in becoming a sleeping partner alongside Potel, though no doubt anticipating that he could use some of his fortune to expand the estate. But after Potel's demise the property was put up for sale in its entirety and Landanger decided to go for broke. Since then there have been significant additions to the portfolio; into Corton and Puligny-Montrachet, and more recently a major acquisition in Chambolle-Musigny. Pousse d'Or is now a very important estate.

HISTORY

One of the two estates in which lie the origins of today's Pousse d'Or is that of the Duvault-Blochet family. A century ago this was a giant domaine: the Romanée-Conti itself was part of it, as was the Clos de Tart, and so was what was then called En Bousse d'Or, a two-hectare monopoly in Volnay. This was acquired by Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet from the Dumesnil family in 1857. In all his estate comprised 100 hectares of prime land.

Duvault-Blochet himself died in January 1874. For the next fourteen years, until November 1886, his landholdings were exploited in common by his successors, the families Guyot, Massin and Chambon. The Clos de la Bousse d'Or and most of the rest of the Côte de Beaune holdings passed into the hands of Armand Massin after the split in 1886, and when he died in 1913, were left to his sons-in-law MM de Chavigné and Lavoreille.

The headquarters of this domaine - it comprised 25 ha in 1955 and may well have been even larger in the first place - were in Santenay, in the imposing construction in the Place Jet d'Eau now occupied by the négociants Prosper Maufoux, and briefly owned by Harveys of Bristol.

Meanwhile, back in Volnay, there was another imposing edifice. In the 1893 Danguy and Aubertin, a sort of Burgundian Cocks and Féret, a photograph of it is described as the Château de Volnay et Clos d'Augignac, the property of M. Delaplanche-Garnier. He too owned a large estate, with vines in Caillerets, Taillepieds and Clos de Chênes in Volnay, and parcels in Pommard, Meursault, Auxey and Puligny-Montrachet. This is the building which is the home of today's Domaine de la Pousse d'Or.

FERTÉ

We now come to Jean-Nicolas Ferté. Ferté was a gentleman farmer and businessman who hailed from the Aisne. He was a bachelor, a lover of huntin', shootin' and fishin', but above all, passionate about food and wine: a bon viveur, a gourmet, a master of the art of good living. He was a member of the Académie des Vins de France, the Académie des Gastronomes and the Club des Cent, a gathering of the richest cream of these wine and food lovers. Ferté know everybody, all the great chefs and maître d's, all the top wine-makers and château owners. In his youth he had even organised things so that he did his military service in Burgundy and could visit the likes of the Marquis d'Angerville, Rousseau, Gouges and "père" Ramonet - his almost exact contemporary - on his days off.

HOW THE ESTATE WAS FORMED

Ferté had a favourite niece, Françoise, and Françoise had a bright young man whom she intended to mary: Gérard Potel. Ferté decided to "adopt" the young pair - Potel referred to him as "my" uncle - and help them set themselves up. He picked the right man.

Gérard Potel's father's family were well-to-do farmers from Château-Thierry, on the edge of the Champagne area. His mother was Catalan in origin, whose family had spent time in Algeria. Gérard himself was one of eight children, and was brought up near Carcassonne where his parents produced table wine. He took a degree in agricultural engineering in Paris and then went to Beaune to study oenology under Philippe Trinquet. It was here that he met Françoise and came under the wing of Jean Ferté.

Ferté, of course, was not disposed to invest his largesse in table wine. This was greatly beneath the old man's dignity. The three of them therefore went on the hunt for something suitable, something which would make fine wine. And Ferté told all his friends to look out for something on his behalf.

It was through "père" Ramonet that the nucleus was found in the Chavigné-Lavoreille estate. Ramonet was someone who never wrote letters. But nevertheless he wrote to Ferté to let him know that this domaine was up for sale. Ferté, however, happened to be on holiday in Morocco, and no one opened his correspondence. So in the end Ramonet telephoned. This was an even more extraordinary occurrence. The old boy hated the telephone

Eventually the message got through. Subsequently a consortium, which included Louis Seysses (father of Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac) who had just sold his Biscuits Belin to Nabisco, was set up. They bought about half of the Chavigné-Lavoreille estate, other parcels being snapped up by Matrot, De Montille, Ampeau and others, and on 8th May 1964, the Domaine de la Pousse d'Or - they had to change the B into a P because the authorities wouldn't allow a title based on the name of a climat - came into being.

Why was the Chavigné-Lavoreille domaine put on the market? Because the successors to the original Massin sons-in-law didn't get on. And the business was not making money. Various parcels of land had been sold off over the years, and the winery in Santenay had just been sold to Harvey's, who had at the time extravagant plans in Burgundy to complement their shareholding in Château Latour (this didn't last long, as neither did the appointment of a young Lavoreille as director of their Burgundian operation).

The Potel's installed themselves in Santenay, hired part of what was then Harvey's premises, and started looking for somewhere more permanent to live in and run their estate from. Meanwhile Gérard continued to make the arduous journey to Carcassonne to supervise proceedings down there.

In Volnay, the daughter of M. Delaplanche-Garnier, a Madame Raoult, had died at the age of 92 in 1962. Her house, bequeathed to an association of retired priests, lay closed and empty - though the cellars were leased by Bouchard Père et Fils - for there were no retired priests who could make use of it. In October 1964 it was put up for auction. Ferté and the Potels, having almost bought what is now the Savigny HQ of the Domaine Antonin Guyon, bought it. With it, beyond the garden, came another monopoly, the 80 ares of the Clos d'Audignac.

GERARD POTEL

It was, of course, through Ferté and his friend and fellow member of the Club des Cent, Louis Seysses, that Seysses' son Jacques should come down to Burgundy and get bitten by the wine-making bug. Jacques worked two vintages with Gérard Potel in the mid-1960s. After Louis Seysses had acquired the Domaine Dujac for his son in 1967 he wanted to sell his shareholding in the Pousse d'Or. But only at a profit, which at that stage could not be paid. For a long time, even beyond the death of Jean Ferté in 1978 there was an impasse, the dearth of domestic interest in taking over the Seysses shareholding dropping to zero after the election of François Mitterand in 1981. In 1985 a group of Americans expressed interest, but not on terms to which Gérard Potel could agree. But finally, thanks to the good offices of the Burgundian-based American wine broker Becky Wasserman, who was selling the Pousse d'Or wines in the USA, and to Potel's friendship with Bill Pannell, founder of the Moss Wood estate in the Margaret River area, a consortium of Australians was found to buy up the Seysses interest. Thanks to that marvellous new invention, the fax machine, the whole thing was finalised in six hours, and on the last day of August 1985 Pannell and his associates became shareholders in the Domaine de la Pousse d'Or.

At first things ran smoothly. But then Pannell and his associates decided that they wanted to release their capital, and they sold their shares to a second group of Australians.This new arrangement was less successful. Relations between France and Australia deteriorated during the early years of the 1990s, coming to a head in the autumn of 1997. A board meeting was fixed at which it would be decided that the Australians would withdraw from the consortium. The night before the meeting, at the age of 62, Potel died of a heart attack.

LANDANGER

Patrick Landanger hails from the Haute Marne and was born in 1950. He has no background in wine except for aiding his grand-father in his few rows of ordinaire near Langres. 'What fascinated me,' he says, 'is how you put grapes in one end, so to speak, and wine would come out of the other.'

Landanger took over and expanded his father's surgical intrsument business, diversified into orthopaedics, and look the company public. He was now a rich man, and he started looking, originally in the Midi, for a wine estate in which he could invest. He heard about the imminent changes at the Posse d'Or, and expressed his interest, but eventually found himself, as I have said, sole proprietor rather than sleeping partner.

RECENT DEVELOPEMENTS

Right from the start, Landanger was in acquisition mode. The first parcels to come up were two slices on the hill of Corton: 50 ares of Bressandes from a member of the Jaboulet-Vercherre family, and no less than 3 hectares of Corton, Clos du Roi, from an English lady, Madame Crosby, a Latour descendent. Landanger, however, thanks to the interference of S.A.F.E.R., a government organization thich supervises all sales, and can even prohibit some of them, only exploits half of this surface. The rest is rented out to Latour, as it had been prior to the sale.

Subsequently, in 2004 Landanger bought 70 ares of Puligny-Montrachet, Les Caillerets, inevitably from the Domaine Jean Chartron. Jean-Michel Chartron later approached Landanger hoping to persuade him to sell it back, but Landanger had no intention of reliquishing one of the best parcels of white Burgundy there is.

In 2008 Daniel Moine, with no successors interested in taking over on his impending retirement, decided to put his Chambolle-Musigny domaine up for sale. Though performance under his reign had been mediocre, the potential, with Bonnes-Mares, Amoureuses, Charmes, Feusselottes and Groseilles, was great, and there was some fierce competion from other interested parties, including, I am told, Dujac. But Landanger emerged as the victor. He hived off some lesser elements of Moine's five hectares, including some Gruenchers in favour of Ghislaine Barthod, and in the meanwhile sold his Santenay, Gravières to the Château de la Crée in the same commune. The state of the Moine 2008 fruit (Landanger having taken over in September) was such that he decided not to produce a vintage that year. The first vintage then was the 2009, and it showed very well in cask in September 2010. Landanger's last purchase has been 30 ares of Clos de la Roche. Again the first vintage was 2009.

THE VINEYARDS

"It is a major convenience," Gérard Potel used to say, "that all my parcels are sizeable. Unlike others I don't have the inconvenience of vinifying in minute quantities."

The most northerly parcel of the 'original' i.e. post 1964 domaine, lies across the Pommard boundary in the premier cru of Jarollières, just below Rugiens. The parcel here now measures 1.5 ha, the domaine having enlarged its holding in the early 1990s by 40 ares it used to rent en métayage from a American called Harris.

Between the village of Volnay and the main road up to Auxey-Duresses will be found a number of small parcels which collectively (and misleadingly, for this too is premier cru land) used to be grouped under the name Le Village. Most proprietors prefer to use any other name which is available, especially if they can then claim the monopoly of it. Lafarge has his Clos du Château des Ducs. The Pousse d'Or has two: the 2.14 ha Clos de la Bousse d'Or and the 80 are Clos d'Audignac. The vines in the former climat average 40 years old. The latter, enlarged and flattened by Gérard Potel when he arrived, was replanted in 1965.

In the premier cru of Caillerets, at opposite ends, the Domaine de la Pousse d'Or has two large parcels - Bouchard Père et Fils is the other major landholder - and one of these is a monopoly too. At the bottom, eastern end, next to the Champans where there is more soil, and where the wines are the most precocious, lies 2.27 ha of plain Caillerets. Upslope, just under the road, is the 2.39 ha Clos des Soixante Ouvrées, (monopole). The vines here have an average age of 45 years old. Here the soil is meagre, just really broken up rock. The wines are quite different. The 60 Ouvrées is very silky and archetypally Volnay. The Bousse d'Or is more masculine, more stuctured. Which you prefer will vary with the vintage, and with your palate.

The remaining parcel of the Pousse d'Or, as it was when Landanger arrived, lies in Santenay. Immediately adjacent to the Chassagne border, next to the northern end of the Gravières climat, is the 2.10 ha parcel known as the Clos de Tavannes. Again there is little soil here. Further south, in the Gravières proper, there was a futher extensive holding, partly planted in Chardonnay. But, as I have said, this has been sold off.

VITICULTURE AND WINE-MAKING

What has been changed in the cellar and in the vineyard since Patrick Landanger has taken over? 'In the cellar? Everything,' he replies.

While it was perfectly functional before, the buildings have been completely re-designed, and the wine-making and storage now takes place on a number of levels, rendering the usage of pumps totally unnecessary. There is a sorting machine which has been in use now for three vintages and with which Landanger is very pleased. And no recourse to chemicals or weedkillers in the vineyard. Moreover vineyard and cellar-work are timed to follow the phases of the moon.

'Bio-dynamism?' I ask. Is he tempted? 'Is it a bit too extreme?' he replies. 'I look at some of my bio-dynamic neighbours. Some of them have immaculate vineyards. Others don't. Perhaps when the present chef de culture reties in two year's time, I'll start some tests.'

In the cellar there is nothing revolutionary. The fruit is picked in small plastic trays, delivered to the sorting table at the top of the slope across from the château, and entirely de-stemmed. After a week's natural cold soaking it is fermented with treading down twice a day, and macerated for about three weeks. Temperatures are confined to a maximum of 32°, and the wines then go into 30 percent new oak for the entire range. Bottling is after 15 to 18 months depending on the vintage, with neither fining nor filtration.

THE WINE

Corton, Bressandes

Medium-full, mature colour. Ample, quite plump nose. Good vigour on the palate. Medium-full body. Quite rich fruit. Good style. Plenty of energy. This is long and very good indeed. Now-2018.

Corton, Clos du Roi

Medium-full, mature colour. Rich, fat, round, spicy, mocha-ish nose. Medium-full body. Velvety tannnins. Very good energy. Lots of finesse. Lovely finish. Fine. Now-2018

1999 Volnay, Clos de la Bousse d'Or

Medium to medium-full colour. Mature. Rich, fat, balanced, succulent nose. Fullish body. Riper, plump, round and balanced. Plenty of energy. This is very good. Now-2019.

Volnay, Caillerets, Clos des 60 Ouvrées

Medium-full colour. Just about mature. A touch of oak and a suggestion of over-extraction here. Fullish body. A bit of residual tannin. Will this ever soften adequately? Very good grip. Lots of succulence and richness, but a bit over the top. Now-2019.

Pommard, Jarollières

Medium to medium-full colour. Just about mature. Sort, ripe, plump and balanced on both the nose and the palate. Medium to medium-full body. Good structure. Not the greatest elegance but good fruit. Finishes well. Good plus. Now-2018.

Corton, Bressandes

Fullish colour. Ample, plump, rich nose. Slightly spicy but decent style and depth. Good grip. No lack of substance. Good energy at the end. Very good indeed. Now-2020.

Corton, Clos de Roi

Landanger bought this in 1999, but without the right to the harvest.