For three generations, the Valette family has lived in Chaintré, a small village on the border between Mâconnais and Beaujolais. They grow wine on fifteen acres scattered in five villages – Chardonnay alone. The grandfather moved here from nearby Bresse after World War II, with no money in his pocket, and started his business with leased vineyards (métayage).

The domain was created in 1977, when Gérard Valette was one of the first in the area to leave the local cooperative and start bottling his own wine. After completing wine training, son Philippe joined in 1990 and then decided to convert the family’s vineyards to organic farming, using biodynamic methods since 1992.

The Valette’s are known for their specific style, wines raised with thorough lees-contact and without racking. They have remained true to this style of winemaking since the 1950s. It is a sort of family-tradition that requires accuracy as well as painstaking detail knowledge of the indigenous yeasts and the wine’s proneness to develop reductive flavors. Again, an art.

Like the top wines of Raveneau or Ganevat, these wines have a level of concentration that gives the wines an extraordinary intensity, levity and persistence, and it also goes some way to protecting them in bottle.

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Maison Valette Pouilly-Fuissé ‘Clos Reyssié’ 2014/15/16/17/18

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