Domaine des Comtes Lafon

The Free Bacchus Story

Until 1993 the Lafon family didn't farm all their own vineyards. Substantial parcels were leased out under métayage, the sharecropping arrangement that was common in Burgundy, and Dominique Lafon spent years taking them back one lease at a time.

He converted the domaine to organic and then biodynamic farming through the 1990s, making Comtes Lafon one of the earlier converts in the Côte de Beaune. The holdings include a parcel of Le Montrachet, which by most accounts is the greatest white wine vineyard in the world.

What he recovered, somebody else lost. Among the growers farming those leased parcels was Pierre Morey, also listed here, for whom the Lafons taking their vineyards back was the event that cost him most of his vineyard's value.

Decanter has awarded Gold. The Montrachet is allocated and effectively unobtainable; the Meursault village bottling is farmed identically and can actually be bought.

Lafon also established Héritiers du Comte Lafon in the Mâconnais, applying the same farming to Chardonnay at a fraction of the Côte d'Or's land prices. That project has done more than most to make the Mâcon taken seriously.