Dom. Prudhon

St. Aubin, Côtes des Beaune Burgundy, France The domaine was established by Henri Prudhon who was born and raised as a vigneron in the village of Saint Aubin since his birth in 1921. He and his wife, Marguerite, combined forces upon their marriage in 1945, putting their small vineyard holdings together to form the Domaine Henri Prudhon. Monsieur Prudhon was a force in his village, serving for many years as the Mayor of this lovely hamlet set just to the west of Puligny and Chassagne along Route Nationale 6. Their son, Gerard, born in 1949, joined the family enterprise and it was Gerard who decided, in the early years of the 1980s, to begin bottling the wines of the estate rather than selling off the fruits of their labors to the local negociants. Gerard, too, maintains the family’s interest in the affairs of the village, being elected multiple times Mayor of Saint Aubin. He as well so increased the family holdings and expanded into the neighboring villages of Chassagne Montrachet and Puligny Montrachet Gerard’s two sons, Vincent and Philippe, have now taken over the direction of the domaine, working under the watchful eye of Gerard who has instilled in his children the deep respect for the finest of Burgundian traditions. As the family owns significant vineyard areas in St. Aubin, their wines are an exploration of the village terroir. The domaine encompasses 14.5 hectares of vineyards and produces roughly 90,000 bottles of wine annually, eighty-five percent of which is exported outside of France. Harvest is manual and the objective of the domaine is to collect grapes when they achieve a balance, as perfect as possible, between sugar and acidity. At harvest, the white grapes are pressed in a pneumatic pressoir and then are racked into barrel to undergo both fermentations: alcoholic and malolactic. The cellars at the Prudhon domaine are quite cool and the fermentations usually extend for a long period of time. The reds are destemmed and experience a cold maceration of just a day or two; then, the alcoholic fermentation proceeds for an additional ten to twelve days with pigeage and remontage occurring throughout, although the Prudhons purposely do not seek to achieve a “super-extraction” preferring to express the finesse and complexity of their particular terroir. Very little new oak is used when aging the red wines; the percentage of new oak on the white wines depends on the particular cuvée with specific reference to the structure of the wine and the quantity produced; as little as 10% new oak may be used but no more than one-third is ever utilized.