Vosne-Romanée

Cecile Tremblay is a relation of the Noellats and the Confurons in Vosne-Romanée and is the grand-niece of the late Henri Jayer so her roots are profoundly entrenched in top quality Burgundy. Her parents, however, were not vignerons so the small family domaine was rented out.

She continues to receive plaudits for her alluring, startlingly pure wines, (bio-dynamic viticulture, unfined and unfiltered) which offer both a succulence and incredible depth of flavour. David Schildknecht writes "This grand niece of Henri Jayer makes from fewer than [8 acres]/4 hectares some of the most exciting new wines in the Côte de Nuits, pure and full of finesse. So run rather than walk to get in as close as is still possible to the ground floor at a domaine that is sure to become one of Burgundy's elite, but sadly, almost as surely, to remain tiny."

Cécile has now vinified and raised her wines in a deep, spacious cellar in Gevrey-Chambertin for the last 2 years. Cécile is well-known amongst other vignerons for the time, care and energy she applies in her vineyards - she works with an incredible dynamism and it is clear that her efforts have been more than rewarded with a fabulous range of wines.

Cécile currently has the use of 3 of the 6 hectares that she owns and from them makes the following wines: Nuits Saint George cuvée Albuca, Morey Saint Denis 'Tres Girard',Vosne Romanée Vieilles Vignes, Chambolle Musigny Les Feusselottes 1er cru, Vosne Romanée Les Beaumonts 1er cru, Vosne Romanée les Rouges du Dessus 1er cru, Echezeaux Du-Dessus and Chapelle-Chambertin.

The winemaking as you can imagine is meticulous; the grapes picked into small boxes containing only 4 to 5 kilos each to ensure their integrity and on arrival at the winery they are cooled and after a pre fermentation maceration the alcoholic fermentation begins in old large wooden casks using only indigenous yeasts. Temperatures are closely monitored and fermentation lasts on average 28 to 35 days. After pressing the wines are matured in barrel for 15 to 18 months and are neither fined nor filtered before bottling which is done according to the lunar calendar.

The result of Cecile's extremely rigorous classification (and de-classification) of all the wines prior to bottling is that the production of all the wines is tiny, some just a few hundred bottles...these are extremely rare wines and so available quantities are unfortunately miniscule. Most importantly though, qualitatively this domain is right at the top of Burgundy.