Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru Champ Gain・Vincent Girardin 2019

(The following is from the importer's materials)
"Eric and Marco are the key players"
Currently, the winery is run by Eric Germain (enologist) and Marco Casqueira (export and sales). Eric is Vincent Girardin's winemaker and a key figure involved in all aspects of winemaking. He was born and raised in Meursault. Marco is from Lyon and is in charge of exports and sales within France.

"My ideal is to combine the farming methods of the past with modern winery facilities."
Our winemaking philosophy is to "intervene as little as possible in the vineyards and make the vinification as natural as possible, but with modern equipment." We use a moon calendar for cultivation and vinification. While we continue to rely on the same manual labor in the vineyards as in the past, we believe that having perfect modern equipment that can properly control temperature in vinification will become increasingly important in the future as global warming progresses.

"A new vision and approach"
Eric brought a new vision and approach to winemaking. Specifically, he called it "traditional winemaking." For example, Vincent Girardin's previous wines were very rich and oaky. Eric's new style, however, is purer, more elegant, and more complex. Compared to when Vincent Girardin was the winemaker himself, the proportion of new oak barrels used was significantly reduced. At the same time, he also lengthened the aging period. Previously, the aging period was a minimum of 10-12 months, but now it covers two winters (approximately 18 months). Since two vintages' worth of wine are aged in barrels at the same time, we naturally needed twice as many barrels as before, which is actually very expensive. Therefore, the investment in the first few years was very high. However, it was a necessary decision to realize Eric's new vision.

Negociant winemaker
In 1982, Vincent Girardin inherited two hectares of vineyard land from his parents and began making his own wine. He quickly achieved success. However, at the time, Vincent was still in his early twenties and did not have enough funds to purchase vineyards to increase production. However, he did not want to purchase wines that were blends of grapes from various plots just to increase production. This was because he wanted to stick to his own style of winemaking.

So Vincent visited nearby grape growers he knew and asked them if he could buy the grapes, not the wine. This was the beginning of winemaking as a "négociant winemaker," a pioneer in Burgundy. Many great domaines now make wine as négociant winemakers. As a result, even famous domaines that used to call themselves "Domaine XX" now drop the "Domaine" part from their labels.

evaluation <br>Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2019 lists the wine as a "Meursault-based white wine specialist" with a red rating of ★★ to ★★★.
Selected as one of Wine & Spirits' "TOP 100 WINERIES OF 2019".
The producer was promoted to a four-star rating in the 2019 Guide des Vins Bettanes + Desseauve, and received a four-star rating in the 2020 edition of the magazine. Other producers with this rating include Domaine Dujac, Domaine Leflaive, Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé, and Domaine Robert Groffier Père et Fils.

Product name: Puligny-Montrachet 1er Les Champs Gins

Producer: Vincent Girardin