Sylvain Pataille - Hits from 2021 - and translation of a fantastic article from LeRouge&LeBlanc
Sylvain Pataille is doubtless the best known producer in Marsannay these days, and with good reason. A consulting oenologist before he started making his own wines, he has a reputation as a brilliant taster and analyst of wines and is equally deft when it comes to vineyard innovation. His success is all the more remarkable considering that he owns no vines of his own but rather leases all his land. A long-time believer in organic and biodynamic farming, he is one of several of a new age of producers in Marsannay who approach grape-growing and winemaking with minimal intervention. In Burgundy in general over the last twenty years, there has been a steady movement away from the rich oaky wines that were de rigueur in the 1990s. Those were heavily extracted wines, with lots of punching down of the skins and pumping of the juice during fermentation. These days the trend leans towards "infusion," with whole bunches, only very gentle crushing of grapes and less working of the fruit in the tanks. The overall result is wines that are brighter, lacier and more lifted.
Pataille's wines are all this and more, with great structure and aging potential on the top cuvées, and pure fruit and earth across the board. His Aligotés have gained a cult-like following, and though Aligoté for more than $50 is a slightly outrageous concept to some, if you've tried one of Pataille's Aligotés, you may understand. We are unfortunately out of the entry-level 2021 Aligoté that was $45, but were lucky enough to acquire a lineup of his most renowned Aligoté bottlings. Equally sought-after and raved about, Pataille's rare 'Fleur de Pinot' Rosé is also a wine people line up to try at the Dive Bouteille, or the less crowded and touristy Vins des Amis wine fair in Montpellier. It's delicate, broad, structured... a real wine, transcending the rosé stereotypes. I tasted the Marsannay Blanc with Sylvain earlier this year and thought it was a fantastic white burgundy offering, and the reds have always delighted me with their bright energy, very subtle tannins, and earthy/mineral undertones. The Marsannay Rouge is a gateway, the Clos du Roy is the top for me. I gladly poured 2010 Clos du Roy (from what must have been a 5 or 6 liter bottle), for about 200 winemakers at the Vins des Amis dinner in France this past winter, and made sure to try some too. It was exquisite, still with plenty of potential, but already so elegant and fine. Though 2010 is a different vintage than 2021 in many respects, with more power and material, it was still a very balanced vintage with great acidity like 2021. I imagine the 2021 Clos du Roy will be mind-blowing with proper aging, so if you have a cellar or some kind of storage situation, you know what to do! I'm biased towards the Clos du Roy, but Sylvain himself considers the Chapitre vineyard to be the best terroir in Marsannay, so I should probably trust the expert! Formerly classified as Bourgogne, it was elevated to Marsannay once the prestige of the site was formally recognized. The list goes on. We actually started this offer with about only four wines, but as luck would have it, we discovered there were scant amounts available of several other wines, so now we have a really comprehensive offering!
If you're interested to read more about Pataille, we are excited to include this (rough) translation of the fantastic article in the winter 2015/16 Le Rouge & Le Blanc wine publication, written by Frank Sauvey...
"Pataillou", "Le grand frisé"... Sylvain Pataille has many nicknames. Always friendly, bubbling with enthusiasm, trying to fit two days into one, most often late, he is always ready to try out a new idea or share his experiences. At almost 40 years old, he remains driven by his childhood dream of having “his” wine estate. It is a reality today, certainly still fragile, with the small harvests of recent years, but the adventure he began fifteen years ago with Maryse, his wife, led to the production of wines that we consider among the greatest of its appellation.
Originally from Marsannay, but not from a wine-growing family, Sylvain always wanted to be a winemaker. It was while going to help his grandfather and father, after school, to make some wine for family consumption, that he caught the bug. Also following in the footsteps of Jean Fournier, the father of Laurent, his inseparable accomplice from Marsannay. From BTS [a degree] in Beaune to an onologist diploma in Bordeaux, some internships in Bordeaux properties, another in Savigny-lès-Beaune, Sylvain was then hired by Kyriakos Kynigopoulos in his oenology laboratory in Beaune. We are in 1997, in the height of the “modernist” era. For five years, Pataille traveled the Côte d'Or, following the production of several dozen clients, including some of the most famous. It was a particularly rich consultancy experience, but the associated sale of oenological products bothered him and, in 2001, he preferred to stop this collaboration.
At the same time, Sylvain began to give substance to his lifelong desire to “have his own domain,” in Marsannay obviously, because he has always beenattached to his native village. In 1999 he took over his first vines: 1 ha of Gamay which no one wanted. Another hectare of Pinot Noir was added the following year and two more the year after that. Four hectares of vines in poor condition, from chemical-productivist viticulture. “I had the list of the most rotten vines in the village,” he remarks with a certain irony. Taking advantage of the decision of two large estates to separate from a few interesting plots, he found himself at themhead of 9 ha in 2002 with vines on the climates of Clos du Roy, La Charme aux Prêtres and with very old Aligotés. It was a risky leap but good commercial contacts, with the United States in particular, allowed him to take the plunge. 2004 marks the installation in the Chenove winery and the end of machine harvesting. In 2008, Laurent Pataille, Sylvain's brother, left the Loire Valley to join the estate team. After fifteen years of sacrifices shared with his wife Maryse, the cornerstone of the adventure and the one who has always taken care of the
administrative side, a total of 15 hectares are now in the estate today, exclusively in the communes of the 'AOC Marsannay. Jointly, to "boil the pot", Sylvain is a professor at the Center for Professional Training and Agricultural Promotion (CFPPA) in Beaune and carries out independent consulting activity - from any laboratory - in oenology, with around twenty estates in Côte d’Or and Côte Chalonnaise. This dual activity is tiring on a personal level but until now has been necessary for financial balance.
Over the years the estate has favored the creation of quality plots. Firstly, by the situation. Clos du Roy, Longeroics, Grasses Têtes, La Charme aux Prêtres are among the "climates" claimed for accession to the rank of ler cru in the file submitted to the INAO by the winegrowers of the Marsannay appellation. And if Le Chapitre is a place called simply claimed as a Burgundy regional AOC, its potential has little to do with the plots at the bottom of the hillsides usually dedicated to this type of wine. Classified by Jules Lavalle in 1855 as a "second vintage", its soil and subsoil qualities have nothing to envy of Clos du Roy or other quality terroirs of the Côte de Nuits. A beautiful terroir would not be much without quality plant material. The estate carried out a long period of work to rehabilitate the very old vines (1919, 1932, 1934, 1949, 1958) even if they were damaged and difficult to mechanize (narrow plantation). “The vines are doing great things now but previously produced 80 hl/ha and were completely chemically weeded for thirty years,” recalls Sylvain Pataille. Other more productive plots, "straight" Pinot Noirs on S04 rootstock for example, were uprooted in favor of quality selections and rootstocks. The result of a quality young vine of ten years often exceeds that of an old vine of poor origin. But the plot is also a philosophy which, undoubtedly, drives Sylvain Paaille since he pushes the concept to the point of separating his beautiful parcels of Aligoté, from 2013, to produce four vintages from the climates Champ Forey, Auvonnes du Pépé, Clos du Roy and La Charme aux Prêtres.
“There was a milestone, 2007, the year of the transition to organic,” declares Sylvain immediately when asked about the evolution of his approach. In the fragile economic situation of a young estate just starting up, the risk is real: “We're a little freaked out but I suspected we were going to get there,” he explains. A good part of the practices linked to organic were already in place. Since that time, the idea of ??practicing biodynamics gained ground. After tests carried out over the years to mature the practice, 2015 is the first year on a real scale. In fact, yields are low: between 20 and 45 hl/ha in recent vintages. Little by little, all the vines are trained in “Guyot-Poussard” pruning in order to fight against diseases and increase the longevity of the vines. The horse has entered the domain. Sylvain trained himself to be able to work with the horse in the vineyard. A significant proportion of stems are kept depending on the vintages and vintages. Up to 100% on Clos du Roy 2013 for example. In the cellar, there are no rules, everything is decided during tasting. He mentions this vintage of old vines of Clos du Roy 2011 which he thought he would devat after three weeks but which he left longer because he saw that the wine was gaining depth. “I understand wine by putting my hands in the vat,” he explains. The grapes are pressed slowly (6 to 8 hours) with vertical presses, for both the whites and the reds. “It presses very gently. Your juices are almost clear with very little lees. You never have hard tannins,” comments Sylvain. “Of course you leave a little juice. But what’s left, you wouldn’t want to do much with it…”
“Sulfur is zero until needed." This is how Sylvain Pataille summarizes his philosophy. He has a real desire to do without it, but it also limits the rise in volatile acidity for example. Organic cultivation seems to him to be a prerequisite: “Since I went organic, I felt that the wines had a resistance to oxygen which was really more important." The concentration of the grapes and the ruthless sorting of the harvest also contribute to this. Only quality grapes make it possible to vinify clean wines without SO2. Then the wines can “benefit” from minimal doses to stabilize: “A wine that has never seen SO2 is very reactive. So you just add 1 g/hl and you have an immediate result." Different tests have been and continue to be carried out: the same vintage aged with more or less SO2 depending on the barrels and bottled, with or without added sulphites, filtered or not, etc. The objective is to be relatively sulfur-free while retaining the bite of the terroir of each vintage. “Sometimes you taste great grapes that are a little smoothed out by the no-SO2 approach. A Chardonnay, a Chenin, a southern wine, sometimes have a common profile which means that I no longer know where I am. For the moment, the scheme at the estate is: vinification without SO2 to keep the yeasts intact, aging as well; just adding 1 g/hl to racking, the same quantity by mass and another gram at the time of filling. [He now typically only adds at bottling and no longer adds SO2 at racking] “I want to accompany them at the wine tasting because otherwise it makes wines that are a bit stewed, honeyed, which I don’t like,” he explains. Aging at the estate is long: 20 or even 24 months for single-plot vintages. They mix barrels and demi-muids. The reduction in SO2 doses has had an impact on the percentage of new barrels because the wines need less of this contribution (micro-oxygenation). Currently the stock of new barrels, depending on the vintages, reaches 40% on L'Ancestrale, 15-20% on Clos du
Roy or Longeroies. But some demi-muids having been purchased new to guarantee their microbiological quality, these proportions should continue to fall. Hygiene of the cellar, scrupulous topping up, racking without oxygen, are elements of success. The length of the aging as well. It plays a role in the stabilization of low-sulphurized wines.
Sylvain Pataille discusses the importance of freedom of choice in the bottling date. Deciding on it when you taste a ready wine or, on the contrary, postponing it when you feel that the vintage has not found its balance... even if it means a little dissatisfying importers and wine merchants lacking in
quality. wine. He also talks about this white cuvée of which he left a barrel in aging for longer to see how it would react in the long term compared to the rest of the batch bottled a few months earlier:
he wonders, does tests, compares.
If we had to remember only one thing from this encounter with the wines of Sylvain Pataille it would be the intensity of the contact. A singular density where concentration and maturity are always animated by a fresh and complex framework which tightens the texture of the finale. Without concession to the "airy Pinot Noir" aesthetic or "glouglou" vintages, the wines assert the personality of their terroirs even if it means offending more consensual palates. It is in this sense that we have built bridges with vintages with strong personality tasted in other regions (Alsace, Loire, Jura, Bordeaux, Piedmont). Beyond a type linked to a region, there is in the strength of the taste of terroir a transversality which brings together rigorous winegrowers who form an intense relationship with their vines. Sylvain Pataille says he prefers fresh vintages "I like a vintage built on tension and freshness a hundred times better. I'm not a "late harvester", I don't like soft wines .” No softness in the ripe vintages tasted, just the feeling of needing more time for the wines to allow whatever finesse they contain to emerge. After the succession of very small harvests in 2010, 2011, 2012 which very nearly destroyed the economic life of the estate, the last two harvests, more reasonable in quantity, allow him to consider stopping or reducing his consulting activity. Difficult decision as the link with his twenty clients has become friendly. A decision that he is considering all the same to gain a little peace of mind... and to try to understand the specificity of each vintage even better, to imagine the most appropriate actions for his vines and to arrive even more accurately at wines that show that the village of Marsannay definitely produces beautiful wines worthy of other villages on the Côte de Nuits.
On the Subject of Aligoté: Presented as a secondary grape Aligoté can produce great wines if you put the resources into it. "I want to help get it recognized. We have a great grape variety... It’s a bit like our own Carignan,” explains Sylvain Pataille, with a motivated eye. In fact it is often produced from clonal selections from the 1970s with yields exceeding 80 hl/ha. Here we are dealing with old vines between 50 and 80 years old of Aligoté Doré, which we find in Bouzeron, produced at 18 hl/ha in 2013, a year penalized by a strong coulure at the time of flowering.
Marsannay
The Marsannay appellation covers three communes: Chenove, Marsannay, Couchey. 240 ha are claimed as AOC (2011): 171 ha in red, 36.50 ha in white and 31.50 ha in rosé, since it is the only municipal AOC in Burgundy to produce all three colors. Located on the outskirts of Dijon, it has long produced popular Gamay-based wines to supply the neighboring town. It was from the 1930s that Pinot Noir reappeared, in the form of a quickly marketable rosé. In 1936 the gap in the reputation of the wines made it miss the AOC train and it was not until 1987 that it finally obtained this qualitative level. However, certain terroirs are perfectly historic and in the past achieved the reputation of other Côte de Nuits wines. Aware of this potential, the dynamic group of young AOC winegrowers has submitted a file for accession to the rank of 1er cru for 14 cadastral localities: Clos du Roy, Les Longeroies, En la Montagne, Es Chezots, La Charme aux Prêtres, Les Boivin, Les Grasses Têtes, Les Saint-Jacques, Clos de Jeu, Les Favières, Au Champ Salomon, Aux Genelières, Le Clos, Champ-Perdrix. These localities sometimes group together under their name other less well-known immediately neighboring localities such as En Clémongeot which can be claimed under the climate Au Champ Salomon... and spelled at the Sylvain Pataille estate with an “e” in place of the “o” and an “s” in addition (Clémengeots). In the same way, for the same place, we find the spelling Aux Avoines in Marsannay-la-Côte and En Auvone in Couchey... and Les Auvonnes on the estate price.
The estate’s vines
Domaine Sylvain Pataille operates approximately 15 ha distributed as follows:
--> 1.20 ha of Aligoté including a generic Aligoté mainly from 30 ares in Champ Forey (55 year old vines), and plot vintages including 8 ares from Auvonnes du Pépé (55 year old vines), 20 ares of Clos du Roy (80 year old vines) and 30 acres in La Charme aux Prêtres (65 year old vines).
--> 1.85 ha of white Marsannay including 15 acres for the La Charme aux Prêtres vintage (50-year old vines) D 0.60 ha of Fleur de Pinot from vines aged between 80 and 65 years
--> 6.50 ha of red Marsannay including 90 ares of Clémengeots (40-year-old vines), 30 ares of La Montagne (40-year-old vines), 20 ares of Grasses Têtes (55-year-old vines), 2 ha of Clos du Roy (45- year-old vines for 1/4 and 15 years for the rest), 85 ares of Longeroies (35 years on average, half of which are from the 1950s) and finally the L'Ancestrale vintage (50 ares) produced from vines from 1938, 1954, 1956.
--> 1.3 ha of Burgundy Chapitre (now Marsannay AOC) available in white (30 ares, 30-year-old vines) and red (1 ha, vines 35 years old on average, 1/3 of which are over 65 years old). And, in addition, white Burgundy (35 ares), red Burgundy (2.70 ha) and a small plot of old Gamays. Most of the vines were planted either before the 1970s and the advent of productive clones, or after 1995 with quality selections. In the long term, the plots of Clos du Roy blanc (0.40 ha planted in 2009) and Au Larrey blanc (0.70 ha planted in 2012/13) should be isolated.
