Domaine Leroy

Lalou Bize-Leroy’s embrace of organic and biodynamic farming has had momentous consequences for Burgundy. Yet its proximate cause was a happy accident: an article on Nicolas Joly in the Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève, spotted by her husband, Marcel, that opened her eyes to this different approach to viticulture. If the discovery took place by chance, however, it satisfied an intensifying desire to break with chemical viticulture. “I knew we had to stop using chemicals in the vineyards, but I didn’t know with what to replace them,” Lalou explains. “Biodynamics was exactly what I was looking for.” In due course, Lalou visited Joly in Savennières and was forced to admit that his vines were in better health than her own. She returned to Burgundy entirely convinced, drawing on the advice of another Loire winegrower, the pioneering biodynamic consultant François Bouchet, to initiate the wholesale biodynamic conversation of Domaine Leroy and Domaine d’Auvenay. Everything went well until a fateful day in 1993. “I passed by the vineyards on Tuesday and everything was fine,” Lalou recalls. “But on Thursday, Vosne-Romanée and Nuits-Saint-Georges were devastated, and journalists were already in the Romanée-Saint-Vivant, surveying the damage.” She surmises that clay had blocked the nozzles of her sprayer, preventing the proper application of copper and sulfur. In any case, much of the crop was lost to mildew, and she produced only 700 liters of Romanée-Saint-Vivant from her one-hectare holdings. In an era when some considered even green harvesting criminally wasteful, Lalou was the butt of criticism. “’That madwoman can’t see that her vines are dying,’ they said,” she remembers. But her commitment to biodynamics remained unwavering. While Lalou numbers among Burgundy’s earliest adopters of biodynamics, “We’ve invented nothing,” she insists. That means the regular application of tisanes and decoctions—especially dandelion, chamomile and horsetail—all prepared with dechlorinated water, and adapted according to the needs of the vines, the soil and the phases of the lunar calendar. Lalou is a great partisan of Maria Thun’s barrel compost, which she credits with particular efficacy. And she even resorted to acupuncture in her parcel of Volnay Santenots when other approaches failed. Above all, she characterizes biodynamics as a perpetual work in progress. “After more than 30 years, one can observe the improvements, but the battle isn’t won. To decontaminate soils tainted with chemicals takes a long, long time.”

What remains to be said about Domaine Leroy and Domaine d’Auvenay? These two estates, presided over by the indefatigable Lalou Bize-Leroy, sit at the top of Burgundy’s qualitative pyramid and dominate any list of the world’s most expensive and sought-after wines. Yet remarkably, most of Leroy’s secrets are hidden in plain sight: in the vineyards. Bize-Leroy trains her vines much higher than her neighbors, rolling the canopies instead of hedging during the growing season. Of course, she has also practiced biodynamic farming since the domaine's inception in 1988. Combined with punishingly low yields, Bize-Leroy's vineyard practices seem to invariably yield wines with otherworldly concentration and perfectly mature phenolics, even though she is typically among the first to harvest on the Côte. In the cellar, meticulous hand sorting—with the central rachis of each grape cluster cut out by hand—is followed by fermentation in old wooden tanks and maturation in barrels from cooperage François Frères, air-dried for three years and with the lowest of possible toasts. The reds are typically bottled quite early by Burgundian standards, the date chosen according to taste and the lunar calendar. Of course, there are surely also a multitude of small details that make a difference, but the rudiments are simple and the results profound. Tasting a Burgundy from Domaine d’Auvenay or Domaine Leroy is akin to tasting some sort of concentrated essence of the vineyard from which it derives. Even humble appellations such as Auxey-Duresses are elevated to a level where they can rival many of the region’s greatest producers’ grands crus. Yet in the cellars, they know their place: you might think the grander climats couldn’t surpass them, but they do. Sadly, ever-increasing prices mean that these wines are already largely beyond mortal means, but by embodying the relentless pursuit of perfection, they continue to inspire growers throughout the world.