Domaine Leflaive

The Free Bacchus Story

Anne-Claude Leflaive's reason for converting one of the great white wine estates of Burgundy to biodynamics was not philosophical. It was that she thought her vineyards were going flat.

That is the detail worth holding on to. The domaine farms Bâtard-Montrachet, Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet, Chevalier-Montrachet and a parcel of Le Montrachet itself — the most celebrated white wine vineyard on earth. What prompted the change, beginning in the 1990s and eventually completed across the estate under Demeter certification, was a documented observation that those sites were losing vitality under conventional management, and that biodynamic practice appeared to restore it. It was a quality decision made about specific pieces of ground, by someone who would have noticed a decline before anyone else did.

Some in Burgundy held that experimenting with one of the world's most valuable Chardonnay vineyards was close to sacrilege. She did it anyway.

The Montrachet Grand Cru has earned 99 points from Wine Advocate, a mark that places it among the finest white wines made anywhere, and Decanter's Trophy confirms the standing is not resting on one vintage. But the addresses were always exceptional. What the farming appears to have bought is the consistency with which the wines express them: precision and longevity across vintages rather than in the fortunate ones.

Anne-Claude Leflaive died in 2015. The estate she left behind is the strongest available answer to anyone who assumes this kind of farming is a compromise: it is practised, at the very top of Burgundy, by people whose margin for error is essentially zero.