Vincent Girardin

History

Vincent Girardin came from a family of winemakers in Santenay, whose roots in the village date back to the 17th century. In the start of the 1980's, at the age of 19, he decided to set up his own business, starting with two hectares of vineyards inherited from his parents. His wines quickly found an audience, and demand exceeded the output that two hectares could provide. Rather than simply buying in ready-made wine, as wine merchants usually do, he adopted a different approach: he began searching throughout the Côte de Beaune for winegrowers who shared his standards and philosophy of viticulture, and purchased grapes from them. As noted on the estate’s official website, this practice was new to Burgundy at the time.

This approach worked so well that, in the 1980s and 1990s, the winery expanded significantly, adding new appellations to its range and cementing its reputation. A decisive shift in the winery’s philosophy took place in the early 2000s, when Éric Germain took up the post of winemaker. Germain, whose father Henri founded Domaine Henri Germain et Fils in Meursault and who had previously worked as an oenologist for the respected Burgundian consultant Kyriakos Kinigopoulos, joined the team in 2002. Together with Vincent, he moved away from the richer, more interventionist style that had characterised much of Burgundy in the 1990s, and shifted towards a more precise and honest expression of the terroir.

In 2012, Vincent Girardin sold the company to Jean-Pierre Nié, president of the ‘Compagnie des Vins d’Autrefois’ in Beaune, who had long been a commercial partner of the estate. The team of nine remained in place. Éric Germain took up the post of managing director and winemaker and immediately set about tackling the challenge that would define the following decade: the sale included the existing vineyards, leaving the estate without any land of its own. Germain’s solution was to rebuild the vineyards from scratch, plot by plot. Today, these efforts have resulted in the creation of a 33-hectare estate, which Germain describes as the first step towards securing the house’s long-term future.

The Vineyards and the négociant side

The estate currently comprises 33 hectares of vineyards, either owned or leased, spread across the Côte de Beaune, which have been rebuilt since 2012 through patient acquisitions in key villages. However, to understand the ‘Vincent Girardin’ estate, one must realise that winemaking is only part of the bigger picture. Alongside its own vineyards, the estate continues to source grapes from a network of partner winegrowers on the region’s finest terroirs – a practice that has been ingrained in the estate’s DNA ever since Vincent Girardin introduced it in the 1980s.
These are not anonymous suppliers. On the estate’s official website, they are referred to as ‘long-standing partners’ who ‘adhere to the same winemaking philosophy as Maison Vincent Girardin on their own plots’. In practice, this means avoiding herbicides and insecticides, hand-harvesting, and low yields. These relationships are long-term, in some cases spanning several decades, and the extent to which the Girardin team is involved in the management of these partner vineyards is closer to that typical of a domaine than of a typical négociant purchasing grapes on the open market.
The combined area of the estate’s own vineyards and purchased grapes covers appellations in the Côte de Beaune, from Santenay in the south to Aloxe-Corton in the north, with Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet at the centre. The Grand Cru range includes Bâtard-Montrachet, Bienven-Bâtard-Montrachet, Corton-Charlemagne and Le Montrachet.

Terroir

The limestone and clay soils of the Côte de Beaune give the Chardonnay grown here its distinctive character. In Meursault, where the winery is based, the wines are typically rich and full-bodied. Puligny-Montrachet is characterised by its mineral precision and tension. The Grand Cru plots, situated on ancient limestone at an optimal mid-slope elevation, produce wines of the greatest complexity and the greatest ageing potential. Each village brings something unique to the table, which is why the winery works with many of them rather than focusing on a single location.

Winemaking Style

The estate’s official philosophy is encapsulated in the phrase ‘Très Haute Couture’: meticulousness, precision and a focus on the work itself, rather than its presentation. The principles of biodynamic farming are applied to all vineyards, both the estate’s own and those sourced from elsewhere: no herbicides or insecticides, the use of natural compost from local farms, high trellises for better photosynthesis, and the use of herbal teas and plant infusions to treat the vineyards. The grapes are harvested by hand, with sorting taking place both in the vineyard and at the winery.

In the cellar, fermentation takes place using the natural yeasts present on the grapes. The wines are aged on fine lees in French oak barrels, with new oak used in limited quantities across the entire range. The lunar calendar dictates all stages of winemaking and bottling. Slight fininf and slight filtration is practised.

The wines

The range is extensive: it begins with the basic regional wines ‘Bourgogne Blanc’ and ‘Aligoté’, continues through a large number of wines from specific villages and plots (lieu-dit) in Meursault, then moves on to the ‘Premier Cru’ wines in Puligny-Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet, Volnay, Saint-Aubin and several other appellations, and culminates in the ‘Grand Cru’ wines at the very top of the range.

The white wines are characterised by their refinement and purity of aroma; the aim is to achieve a balance between richness and freshness, rather than veering towards extremes.

The red wines are described on the official website as fruity and elegant with soft tannins; they have been receiving increasing attention following the replanting of the estate’s vineyards in the period after 2012. Germain himself has singled out ‘Volnay Vieilles Vignes’ (Volnay Vieilles Vignes), made exclusively from grapes grown in the estate’s own vineyards, as the wine that best symbolises what the house strives for: this wine demonstrates that ‘Vincent Girardin’, long renowned for its white wines, now takes its reds just as seriously.