Céline and Laurent Tripoz: The Soul of the Mâconnais

9/9/16 -

I first met Céline Tripoz this past January at a tasting in Angers. A few months later, I received an email from her asking for help finding her daughter a place to stay when she came to visit New York. I was happy that she had remembered our short conversation at the massive Salon des Vins de Loire, where she probably had spoken with hundreds of other people just like me, and also that I was actually able to arrange something once her daughter arrived later that month. From there the email chain drifted into a thread about the frosts and devastating hailstorms that pummeled many areas of Burgundy this spring, the work that we do here at Chambers Street, and life in general. It was great to catch up, and felt less like two professional people talking solely about wine (which in this line of work happens very frequently), and more like chatting with a friend, albeit a friend who happens to make some of the best wine in the Mâconnais.

Céline and her husband, Laurent, started their estate in 1986 by acquiring vines in and around the small village of Loché, where their home and cellar are located. At first they were selling grapes to the local coop, but quickly decided that they could produce higher quality wines from their fruit, and so they released their first vintage in 1990. All of their 11.5 hectares of vines are planted in clay soils rich with limestone and have been farmed organically and biodynamically since the late 1990s (they are certified by Agriculture Biologique and Demeter); some of the newer parcels have never been treated with herbicides or pesticides at all. As you can imagine, this means meticulous work in the vines with severe pruning, de-budding, and leaf pulling to achieve concentrated, healthy fruit that will be harvested at optimum maturity. In the cellar, Céline and Laurent believe that working the natural way is crucial to obtaining the maximum amount of quality from terroir that they see as being less prestigious than parts of Burgundy further north meaning that all fermentations occur naturally with the only addition being a touch of SO2 for some cuvées.  

These wines are consistently some of the most thoughtful, pure, and precise wines to come out of the Mâconnais, and they rarely stay around for long. Now knowing them a bit more personally, this is no doubt a reflection of Céline and Laurent, whose passion and dedication to their land is apparent in each bottle. My notes on these wines from January certainly affirm that. With all of this in mind, I know I’ll be stocking up on quite a few of these. Tim Gagnon