Gift With a Difference
Thanks to Partners Claire and Bob Bowen for this article.
HOW many times when you’re enjoying a glass of wine with friends does the conversation slip into dream scenarios? These daydreams range from what you’d do if you won the lottery or retired with a golden handshake.
For many owning a French chateau with vineyard attached sounds sublime. But the next best thing to having your own vineyard is to have your personal row of vines.
And this is not just a dream but an exciting and realistic prospect as my husband, Bob, discovered when he was given a row in Burgundy as a really special birthday present.
His vines were in Rully and what was even more thrilling was that he could go and see them and pick up four dozen bottles of ‘his’ wine direct from the vineyard.
It was 10 years ago that 3D Wines came up with the idea of renting rows of vines in top vineyards. It was the brainchild of wine enthusiast David Dickinson. And the scheme is beneficial to the winegrower, who gets paid up front, and the ‘partner’ who has the opportunity to taste and own fine wines at a reduced price.
“Wine buyers/retailers take advantage of suppliers by not paying up front which creates difficult cash flow problems. 3D pay the vigneron as soon as the partner pays for their wine. It’s a virtual circle. They have money up front, as well as guaranteed wine sale,” explained Mr Dickinson.
We’d been to vineyards before on French trips but this was definitely going to be a little more special. Once you become a 3D partner you are sent information on your vineyard and the vignerons plus a newsletter carrying stories from events as well as informative features on wine.
Appetites whetted, we set off in a new Honda Accord Tourer - chosen for its big boot - to make our way down to the P&O ferry at Portsmouth.
An appointment was made for us at the Domaine Brelière by 3D so all we had to do was turn up. Rully is a pretty wine village and our destination was next to the church.
We were warmly welcomed by the owner Jean-Claude and his Italian wife Anna. Both spoke perfect English - and French, Italian, Spanish and German. Certainly there was no language barrier.
“I had a passion for foreign languages and wanted to be an interpreter,” explained Jean-Claude who spent many years abroad before returning to Burgundy.
He wasn’t sure that being a vigneron was what he really wanted but he worked with his father and attended courses in viticulture in Beaune and Dijon. “Once I started studying I found it interested me a lot and that is where the passion started.”
His father started the Domaine in 1948 and Jean-Claude took over in 1983. It’s a small enterprise - just over 18 acres producing around 43,000 bottles of wine annually - and is run by him, his wife, father-in-law and one other employee.
They produce five different wines - two white Chardonnay and three red Pinot Noir - and all are Premier Cru bar the white La Barre Village.
Sixty per cent of the production is sold direct from the Domaine while the remaining 40 per cent goes to restaurants and for export.
As soon as we arrived Jean-Claude took us into an attractive reception area where we tasted a range of his white and red wines of differing ages.
While we tasted he told us about the wine, the care taken to produce a fine Burgundy and the effects of the weather on the vines.
Dry weather, he said, produces a wine with a nutty, flinty, apricot flavour while wet weather adds flavours and aromas of citrus fruit, roses, butter and honey.
Rully is famous for its white wines but it is also the only village in the Cote Chalonnaise where both red and white are produced.
He explained that fields which produce Premier Cru wine must face the heat which makes the wine lose its acidity. And later we visited the sun drenched field where our Premier Cru Les Preaux vines were planted.
The wines are raised for one year in oak barrels before bottling. Before that the vines are thinned out in May to control the amount of wine produced and improve the flavour. Quality not quantity is the byword here.
We visited the cellar to taste last years wine and collected the fruit of “our vines” which had a special label on the boxes with Bob’s name. The only downside is that they won’t be ready for drinking for a while - the earliest is three years for the red and two for the white but they will continue improving for 10 years or more. Somehow I think we may have to have a small taster before then - but don’t tell Jean-Claude.
Rully was such a gorgeous village and our host so friendly that I was almost tempted to ask if I could return to join the grape pickers at harvest time. But any thoughts I had on the score were dashed when he announced that they machine harvest.
“We have been harvesting by machine for six years now. It helps produce better wine as we don’t have to wait for the pickers to arrive and we can pick the grapes when the time is right.”
It was a nice dream while it lasted but I think my back is very grateful.
This was by far the best visit we’d ever had to a vineyard - it was more like visiting a friend than going to buy wine.
Lincolnshire based 3D has arrangements with 35 vineyards in most areas of France and have plans to creep over the border into Italy. They started in the Loire because of its proximity to the UK but now travel as far south as the Rhône and Languedoc.
And you don’t have to stay with the same Domaine. “People swap winemakers. They can be in the Loire this year and Burgundy next. The vignerons have got to know each other too and have almost got their own little group going,” said Mr Dickinson.
But I don’t think that we could ever swap Jean-Claude and the Domaine Breliere. Our memories are too special.