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About the producer
Étienne Grivot and his wife Marielle (Patrick Bize's sister) took over from his father in 1990, making him the fifth generation of Grivots to make wine in Vosne-Romanée. In the 1930s it was one of the first domaines to bottle and sell the wines themselves. The Grivots go back a long way in Burgundy. Indeed two previous generations of Grivots have married girls of the same surname. Jean Grivot, whose name continues to appear on the labels, took over from his father in 1955 and handed on to his son Étienne in the early 1980s.
Étienne, married to Marielle Bize from Savigny, has been through through all of the ranks as winemaker here. When he took over, his father’s style was for gentle, graceful wines which perhaps were a little weak in the lesser vintages. In 1994, a difficult year but a breakthrough vintage at the domaine, Étienne began to find his own voice and made a range of very fine wines in spite of poor weather. Since then he has not looked back, and a drive to reduce yields and fine-tune his work in the vineyards and cellar since the mid-2000s continues to drive quality upwards.
Étienne produces a range of stunning wines which possess real depth and class. In answer to a question over the secret of his success, he confides, "There's no recipe; it's very personal. As a result, it's very frustrating as one's never content." The succession to the next generation is now well underway, with Mathilde and Hubert increasingly influential, under their father’s experienced and wise guidance.
Vineyard
Big strides have been made on the vinicultural front. Étienne has bought a Chenillard caterpillar tractor to work some of the more inaccessible vines and has hired a horse, Pirate, to plough his Richebourg, Échezeaux, Beaumonts, Brûlées, Suchots, Boudots and some village Vosne vineyards. Étienne is not a fan of training the vines too high or of leaf-plucking on the south side, as he prefers a long, slow ripening period. There is an average age of 45 to 50 year-old-vines across this 15ha domaine which covers 22 appellations (18 red) with holdings in Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-St Georges, Clos de Vougeot, Échezeaux and Richebourg.
Winery
The grapes are 100% destemmed, though with some experiments where stalks are retained, and the fermentation allowed to start naturally, with a little punching down before it starts. Thereafter there is no more pigeage: "I don’t like to mix the physical (punching down) with the spiritual (fermentation)," says Étienne. One pump-over per day during fermentation before the wines are transferred into barrels. Four tonneliers are used to avoid the signature of any one. Étienne prefers the wood from the Allier, Tronçais and Bertranges forests, and now buys some of his own wood.