Chandon de Briailles, A Brief History

I’m a huge fan of Burgundy, both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are amongst my favourite grape varietals and I am very lucky to have tried some extraordinary (read: ludicrously expensive) bottles from across the region through my job as a wine merchant. However, as a personal consumer, is there any value to be had? Of course, like everywhere, there is. In Burgundy, however, you will need to look a little harder. One producer I have kept coming back to over the years and has never disappointed is Chandon de Briailles.

Based in Savigny-lès-Beaunes, Chandon de Briailles is run by Claude de Nicolay and her brother François. Claude is the seventh generation of de Nicolay and fourth woman to run the domaine, which has been in the family since 1834. By the 1890s, the house was being run by Claude’s great grandmother, Jeanne Ducos, the Comtesse Chandon de Briailles who had an astute business mind and decided she had to be one of the first people to buy vines on the forest topped limestone hill that is Corton, the Côte de Beaune’s only red Grand Cru. After selling five hundred hectares of family owned forest in the Haute Côte, she was able to snap up four valuable hectares of the highly sought after terroir. Initially, she sold all her grapes up until the 1920s (after Phylloxera had finally done one) when the domaine, now run by the comtesse’s daughter started actually vinifying the grapes, but they weren’t commercialising the wine yet, electing instead to sell all their barrels to local negociants. The first vintage to be bottled with the family name on the label was 1959 albeit a private bottling many years later in honour of Nadine Soudée’s wedding to Aymard-Claude de Nicolay. The first commercially available vintage was 1978.

Enter: Nadine, married into the de Nicolay lineage, Claude’s mum and saviour of Chandon de Briailles! The property had somewhat dropped in quality after Nadine’s grandmother died; it had gone through a period of disrepair and general neglect. Nadine took over in 1982 and she went for it! She got rid of all the lay about staff and replaced them with hard working local youths, she upgraded the cellar, and crucially, she introduced the idea of organic farming. Nadide turned the property around and started making the wines that we now know and love.

Fun fact for all you genealogists out there: The Chandon bit of Chandon de Briailles is the same as the Chandon bit of Moët & Chandon… heard of them? This made global distribution very easy and helped launch the brand spanking new Chandon de Briailles to the US and across the world. Nadine has since dissociated herself from the Moët brand, sent off with a contract that says she’s not allowed to make a sparkling wine.

In 1991, Claude returned from studying viticulture and oenology in Beaune and Dijon with some impressive shiny degrees to her name. She joined her mum in the vineyards and cellar and they worked side by side until 2003 when Nadine finally said “enough”. The pair worked brilliantly together, as Claude said “she had learned everything on the job and I had a very formal training so we completed each other very well”.

In 2001, François, one of Claude’s three siblings joined the team after bumbling about the world doing non-wine related business stuff followed by a short spell making wine in Oregon and selling wine in Paris. François bought forward the idea of making fully biodynamic wine, and by 2005, the now 13.5 ha domaine had turned, earning full Demeter and Ecocert certification in 2011.

The property is still run by Claude and François. They have honed in on a style of wine that perfectly balances the Burgundian tradition of light complex wines with modern day biodynamic farming, a method very close to their hearts. Through a lot experimenting, they found that biodynamically farmed vines hold up to diseases and adverse weather a lot better as well as producing what they found to be far superior wines. The duo use silica in the vineyards to help light refraction, only plough their Corton vineyards with horses to avoid compaction, and they leave their wines on the lees for a full year in oak during maturation. These are a few examples of methods Claude and François believe makes a far better wine, and I must say that in my (fairly extensive) experience of their wines, I heartily agree!

I will write one note for this post, and that is for my, thus far, favourite Chandon de Briailles wine: 2006 Corton, Les Bressandes

Those of you paying attention will remember that 2006 was the first vintage to be fully biodynamic. Opening this bottle is like opening a century old treasure chest. At first you’re hit with all the dust, musty smells and you can’t quite make out what’s going on. But after a while, the dust dissipates and you catch a glimpse of the gold, gradually you see more of it, then some other jewels, diamonds etc. and it’s beautiful. Once the wine had properly opened after about an hour in the glass it showed off its musty age with raisins, cinnamon and sour cherries all prancing about doing a good job of hiding the earthy finish, which eventually becomes quite sweet and very very pleasant indeed. It’s a beautiful wine at its peak.

Nadine planted a few rows of Pinot Blanc in the 80s, which would make its way into the white Ile de Vergelesses in cool years to help the Chardonnay reach its full potential but with global warming reducing the amount of cold vintages, Claude and François started mucking about with the Pinot Blanc making an orange wine in open tanks and very little intervention, sadly they only make one barrel a year and don’t export it so I’ve not yet had the pleasure of trying it… But I know what I’m doing next time I’m in France!

Chandon de Briailles is a historical domaine making classy and traditional wines across Savigny to a very high standard but they have not let themselves fall to the trend of pricing their wines out of the common populace’s range. I love Chandon de Briailles and I would highly recommend grabbing the next bottle you see if you have never tried them.