Domaine Sylvain Pataille
One of the best cellars in 2024. Sylvain made lovely wines which have very good matter for the vintage. He was happy to use as much whole-bunch fermentation as normal. He was not satisfied with the quality of his Bourgogne Rouge, so he sold it off in bulk. As noted, Bourgognes suffered in the conditions and some of this comes from bought-in grapes which were less good than his own. He harvested 19th-28th September producing 18hl/ha, excluding his aligotés (23hl/ha including aligotés). Sylvain is a fan of tressage, a vine-training method that, instead of hedging the vines into neat rows, does not trim the shoot tips, allowing the vine to grow longer stems. He now has 5ha of this. It is time consuming to manage as all operations have to be done manually. But it keeps grapes small, preserving better acidity. All vines for his L’Ancestrale wine are tressé.