Alix de Montille (Burgundy)(2)
By Bertrand Celce 2009-3-3 11:32:26
Showing the pneumatic pressesThe Domaine de Montille has been known mostly for its pure, structured reds (this was the work and style of Hubert de Montille - see this Beaune-Imports page about his vinification style) and Alix de Montille brought more whites in. She now works on both her purchased white grapes and on the whites of the family estate, which include Beaune 1er Cru les Aigros, Corton-Charlemagne, and Puligny 1er Cru le Cailleret. But volumes speak by themselves about the respective shares of colors on the Négoce side : the Deux-Montille-Soeur-Frère Négoce makes 22 white cuvées and only 2 red cuvées...Her elder brother Etienne is in charge of the vinification of the reds (mostly from the family estate as you can understand). While he had always been interested in the family winery (his first vinification took place in 1983), Etienne was working until 2001 in the audit/banking sector, using his weekends and vacations to help his parents and work at the winery. In 2001, he had the opportunity to become director of the Chateau de Puligny-Montrachet and that's when he decided to make a decisive change of career. He came back to the region to stay and also to work spend more time on the family estate, but he had already taken over and brought his vinification style there in 1999-2000. As said above, Etienne's first vinification dates from 1983, and 1991 was the first year his father let him conduct a vinification unattended. After the years, his own style emerged, slightly different from his father's wines and Alix considers that 2000 was the beginning of a new expression for the De-Montille wines.
On the picture above, Alix shows us the use of a mirror hanging over one of the two presses : at harvest time, both presses are in use, one outside, one inside and mirrors help keep an eye on the juice flow.
The door to the vaulted cellarsHer father, she says, made wines with extreme purity, vins de curé as we say in French, meaning austere, straight and pure wines, and these purist wines needed lots of time to open. Etienne de Montille's style for the reds was more on the silky side, with a more 
pleasant and harmonious feel in the early years so that the customer doesn't have to wait years to begin enjoy what the wine can offer. In spite of the fact that each of them work on a single color of wine, they exchange their views and give or ask their respective opinion on the other's wines, particularly when one of them is worried about a given cuvée and looks for advice. Speaking of influences, Alix learned to love white wines with her husband Jean-Marc Roulot of Domaine Roulot, a 12-hectare estate reknowned for its whites.
As we tour the large vat room, Alix says that at harvest time these open tronconic vats on the side are all over the place for the fermentation of the reds, roughly occupying a large half of the vatroom, as they vinify here also the 24 red cuvées of the family estate in addition to the 2 reds of the Négoce. All these vats come from the Grenier cooperage, either being 80-year-old vats renovated by Marc Grenier or new ones. They of course use only wild yeast for the fermentation in these open vats, or in the casks for the whites. The whites are pressed, then racked in multi-story stainless-steel vats [picture on left] and then go into the casks for the fermentation stage.
From wineterroirs.com
