Anne-Sophie Dubois


— About —

THE DOMAINE

Her family purchased the vineyard in 1992 and incredibly she took over full responsibility of running the Domaine in 2006 when she was just 23 years old. Her Domaine has been certified Organic since 2019 (all of which is inside the Lieu Dit of Les Labourons).

The Lieu Dit is situated a 400 meters above sea level with West South West exposition on some pretty serious slopes, some parcels exceeding 30% offering good drainage, sunshine exposure and poor soils unlike the more fertile plains. In Anne’s words “the vineyard forms a “cirque, similar to an amphitheater, composed of 18 plots”. Granitic soils, classic to the appellation producing yields on average 35 hl/hct.. High density plantings is also a key success factor to Anne’s domaine, 8,000 to 10,000 vines per hectare.

“The composition of the soil: It is here a pure expression of pink granite, the soil being composed mainly of sand and stones from the mother rock. As the soil, the wine expresses a mineral, fresh and delicate nature. Poor and filtering soil, Gamay is not very vigorous here and naturally gives yields about 35 hl/ ha also helped by High density planting: between 8,000 and 10,000 vines per hectare”- Anne Sophie Dubois

 

THE WINEMAKING

When I first met Anne back in 2014 she was strictly following a regime of 100% destemmed fruit, only to using partial carbonic maceration in her younger cuvee Les Cocottes. She referenced Henri Jayer’s philosophy as her inspiration, what she regards as the key to great red burgundy – organics, destemming, pre maceration and no filtering. Her time making wine in Volnay seemingly the perfect playground before she purchased the 8 hectares in Fleurie.

Just prior to meeting her in 2014 she had she met Jacques Neauport who really inspired her to a change of direction. Jacques Neauport was seemingly Jules Chauvet’s right hand. Chauvet’s touted with being somewhat of the father of “natural”, most famously starting with Marcel Lapierre. He was a big advocate of cold carbonic macerations of Gamay on granite soils. Chauvet also promoted wines with as minimal sulphur as possible, in some cases none at all but highlighted the key to this was organic viticulture, indigenous yeasts and cold carbonic maceration. Credit to Alice Feiring, author of the ‘dirty guide to wine’ for his expansive article specifically on these two winemakers.

Fast forwarding to 2018 she has started to incorporate whole bunch fermentations in small parts to all her bottlings, citing the benefit of fruit and tension that this technique brings however in both L’Alchimsite and Les Labouron’s it only represents a part of the overall blend. Wild fermentations, gravity fed winery set up and only using older oak for her elevage.