When in Burgundy, recently, we caught up with Patrice Rion, one of the Nuits-St.-George premier winemakers.  You can see our interview with him on the video segment.

For those of you who have attempted to navigate the roadways to Burgundy vintners, you know how challenging directions can be.  After kindly offering to see us on a Sunday and then becoming so lost that our GPS was confused, we called Patrice and he kindly guided us in after an errant stop at the Daniel Rion vineyards just up the street.  Just as we began our discussion with him, he had to briefly rush out to assist a neighbor  in extinguishing a small field fire.

Patrice worked in the family winery until 2000 when he and his lovely wife, Michele, moved down the road to begin their own business.  Now, some ten years later, they are producing wonderful modern style reds which are often approachable a few years after their release.

Patrice farms biodynamically, in order to allow the vineyards and the winemaking process to express themselves with as little man made interference as possible.  This means avoiding chemical additives such as synthetic insecticides and pesticides and using a small quantity of copper as needed to combat vine fungal and mold, most often prevalent  during and after rainy and humid spells.  Only organic fertilizers are permitted in order to maintain the soil’s natural vegetation.  As well, Patrice also insists that their grower for the negociant wines abide by the same technique.

As you’ll learn from our video interview with Patrice, he believes in restricting the vine’s yields in order to concentration the vine’s energy on a limited cluster of grapes.  This offers the potential of very high quality grapes.  All of his vines range from 25 to 65 years of age and tend to produce berries with thick skins yielding deeply colored, tannic and well balanced wines.

The grapes are harvested by hand, a very time consuming and laborious process.  Patrice feels that this ensures that harvesters pick only the best clusters as well as reducing damage that could result from a mechanical machine harvest.  Subsequently, they’re brought to the receiving stage in small, well aerated boxes.  This prevents the grapes from being crushed during transport.  The grapes are destemmed and undergo a cold maceration for two to three days prior to the start of a one week fermentation.  Racking occurs only once prior to bottling and all the wines are matured in 100% new oak.

In general, Patrice’s wines are deep in color with blackberry and currant and range in character from elegant with a fine balance of tannins and acidity (i.e. his 2002 Gevry Chambertin Clos Prieur, 1er Cru Lavaux Saint Jacques and the Chambolle Musigny  Les Cras) to powerful wines with an intense nose that demand aging ( the 2002 Gevry Chambertin and Nuits Saint George Vielles Vignes).  For pairing, most of his reds will work beautifully with red meat and game, the more elegant styles better suited for “lighter” game such as quail and pigeon.  Finally, while reds predominate, Patrice produces a limited amount of whites such as an Aligote and Chardonnay.

In closing, we asked Patrice about the effects of global warming on his vineyard practices.  When he first started in the business in 1980, harvest time, on the whole, was in early October.  Now, harvest time averages mid September and some years even a little earlier, a change echoed by the vintners throughout Burgundy and Rhone.  While we don’t know if this is a short term phenomenum measured in decades, centuries or millenium, the reality is that vintners are having to make some real time adjustments both in harvest time and vineyard location.