La Petite Empreinte and Light Reds for Spring and Summer!
5/3/25 -
I first visited Alice and Olivier De Moor back in 2005, in their tiny cellar in Courgis, tasting the 2004s from barrel and bottled wines going back to the 1999 Rosette. It was an extraordinary experience - organic farming was almost unknown in Chablis at the time, not to mention wild yeast fermentation and minimal sulfur. And I think only Raveneau, Dauvissat and Boudin were harvesting by hand! The wines were amazing and unusual and hard to sell for the first few years, but now they are hard to obtain, with allocations going down from many cases to a few bottles...
Happily, Alice and Olivier's son Romain has joined them at the estate, and Romain and his wife Mélissa have created a wonderful new estate - La Petite Empreinte!
"After meeting and falling in love during respective apprenticeships in the Jura (Julien Labet for Mélissa and Jean-François Ganevat for Romain), the couple agreed to move back to Burgundy so Romain could join his parents Alice and Olivier at their eponymous estate in Chablis. Always set on doing her own thing, Mélissa set forth to find some parcels to work on her own. Through a program designed to help young producers find land to start their own estates, she was able start renting plots in 2020, eventually purchasing the vines in 2022.
The first and largest sector consists of two plots totaling one hectare, all planted in 1990. Located in Saint-Bris on an idyllic coteau of Kimmeridgian limestone overlooking the Yonne river, Pinot Noir is the main variety planted here, along with 10 ares of Gamay. Two wines are produced from this land: a Pinot called “Mas a Tierra” and a magnum only cuvée of Gamay. The second parcel consists of 40 ares of Pinot Noir, from which they produce the cuvée “Tapis Rouge." The vines here are exposed full South and were planted in 1978 on a steep coteau of Portlandian limestone
Bazin and De Moor, in addition to raising two young daughters and Romain working full time with his parents, do 100% of the work and currently have no employees. Mélissa is responsable for the manual work in the vines (pruning, green harvest…) with Romain doing the tractor work. The vines are certified organic or in conversion towards certification. Cover crops have been incorporated since 2021 and, like Alice and Olivier in Chablis, they have been planting fruit trees in the vines to encourage biodiversity and break up the monoculture of viticulture and create stronger rhizome networks in the soil. In the cellar, the couple work off instinct and make all vinification decisions together. Maceration lengths, pigeages/remontages (or lack thereof) have varied each vintage, but the wines all ferment and age in old barrels with no S02 added at any point. Everything is currently vinified in the De Moor cellar." (Louis/Dressner website)
The 2023 Mas a Tierra and Tapis Rouge were hiding in our cellar (it's much bigger than the De Moor's) - we're happy to now offer these two beautiful Pinot Noirs just in time for spring and summer enjoyment!
To complement these two lovely, light-bodied and wonderfully aromatic Pinots, we've added some of our favorite wines made in a similar style from all over the world, all guaranteed to provide refreshing enjoyment in the coming months...!
(Romain and Mélissa are pictured above, the picture below appeared in our article on the De Moor 2005s, provenace and date unknown.) -David Lillie
