Domaine Cécile Tremblay

The Free Bacchus Story

Cécile Tremblay took on a collection of family parcels in 2003 that she had never worked before — a Chambolle-Musigny, a Chapelle-Chambertin, an Échezeaux, and village and premier cru plots scattered across the Côte de Nuits. The address list reads like a syllabus. She was starting from nothing in every respect except the land.

Certified organic farming was completed in 2005, with certified biodynamic practice following in the next decade. The reason was observational rather than doctrinal: the old vines she inherited responded to biodynamic management with an aromatic intensity and structural precision that conventional farming appeared to suppress, and the grand cru parcels in particular expressed their sites more completely once the soil biology was working properly.

The vineyards had been let to tenant growers for years. Tremblay, a great-niece of Henri Jayer, reclaimed them one at a time as each lease expired from 2002.

The wines have drawn 97 to 98 point assessments, and the Échezeaux Grand Cru is regarded by Burgundy specialists as among the most precise expressions of that vineyard available anywhere. Production is small and allocation is tight.

Burgundy has a habit of discovering producers like this a decade after the people paying close attention did. Tremblay built a domaine alone, without an established structure behind her, on some of the most demanding ground in France.