JEAN AND FRANCOIS RAQUILLET, Mercurey

The Raquillet family can date their roots in Mercurey back to the 17th century. Francois first started working with his father in the early-1980s after training at the Lycee Agricole in Beaune, and took over winemaking completely in the early 1990s, his father finally retiring in 1995 when his wife Emmanuelle joined the team. He sold off the lesser Bourgogne and Village appellation land to concentrate his energies on the 1eres Crus, and has completely transformed viticulture and winemaking on the 10 hectares which they now exploit in this, the most important of the Chalonnaise appellations, reducing yields by short pruning, bringing in a table de tri to sort the fruit and reject anything that is less than perfect, and introducing better quality oak barrels. The fruit is hand-picked into small cases to avoid damage, and is 100% destemmed. A period of pre-fermentive maceration is practiced in order to extract the supple fruit elements, and the wine is traditionally fermented for around 15 days, with twice-daily punching down of the cap, before being aged in 228 litre oak barrels, around 25% of which are renewed each year. The Chardonnays are pressed then fermented and aged in larger 500 litre barrels to moderate the oak influence. This is now a leading producer of top-class Mercurey.