Domaine Michel Lafarge,
15, rue de la Combe,
21190 Volnay

Owner/wine maker: Michel and Frédéric Lafarge

Background

Frédéric Lafarge is patently a man who suffers neither fools nor time-wasters gladly. However the faint-hearted should not be discouraged. A genuine interest in wine and little perseverance will get you behind the rather brusque exterior and there you will find an open, passionate and interesting man, driven by conviction, unafraid to say what he thinks, much like his father Michel before him. This is, refreshingly, a blah-blah free zone.

As a young man, he was deeply influenced by a native American maxim, “We do not inherit the land from our parents, we borrow it from our children.” This allowed him at an early age to define his role as caretaker, as oppose to master, of the domaine. This sense of responsibility is equally influenced by the fact that he is the latest in a long line of Lafarges to work the land in Volnay. Indeed they can trace their roots back to pre-Revolution days, although it was only after 1789 that the family started acquiring parcels of land. With each successive generation the estate was enlarged, so that today Frédéric farms around 12ha in four different communes.

Whilst they can date the beginning of the domaine to the early 1800s, the first of the most precious sites was not secured until the late nineteenth / early twentieth century. Michel’s great-grandfather acquired a parcel of Clos des Chênes, and his grandfather the Clos du Château des Ducs, an enclave and monopole in the confusingly named premier cru Le Village. (As the appropriately aristocratic title for this wine had not been formally registered before the Second World War, it was afterwards disallowed as a 1er Cru by the authorities until relatively recently.) Michel’s father, Henri, began extending the estate beyond Volnay, with the purchase of vines in the Beaune premier cru Les Grèves in 1954. More recent admissions have been the Beaune premier crus Les Aigrots, the Pommard premier cru Les Pézerolles, and several more parcels of regional and village vines in Meursault and Volnay.

Bottling at the domaine began early, back in 1934, and since the ´60s the entire production has been sold in bottle. Michel joined his father in ´46 and was himself joined by his son in ´78. Then 20 years old, Frédéric had already qualified from the Beaune and Dijon wine schools and done stages in both Bordeaux and Champagne.

The basic principles guiding the work in the vineyard have changed little in the passage from father to son. Michel was always committed to using homeopathic and organic methods, treating the soil and the vines as little as possible. Wishing to preserve the balance of the soil, he shunned the use of potassium-rich fertilizers so popular in the ´60s and ´70s and the family today believe this helps to explain why they suffer less from such problems as fan leaf and eutypiose (eutypa dieback) than their neighbours. In the same vein, commercial preparations of such treatments as Bordeaux mixture were considered to be too strong and were thus prepared “in house”.

Taking these strong principles a step further, Frédéric began experimenting with biodynamics in a limited number of parcels in 1997 and since 2000 the entire domaine has been given over to this form of agriculture, which he believes allows him to come closer to his goal of achieving harmony in the vineyards, by treating both the soil and the plants with even greater respect.

Otherwise the work in the vineyard is what one might expect from a quality conscious domaine. Widescale replanting is rejected in favour of replacing dead vines, thus maintaining the high average age of the plantations. The vines are pruned severely in the winter, believing as they do that this is the best method to control yield (although green harvesting is sometimes employed as a last result). Curiously, the majority of vines are spur-pruned (currently the trend is in favour of single-cane pruning). The belief is that well-positioned spurs allow for a more even distribution of fruit, hence better ripening and fewer rot problems thanks to improved air circulation. Pruning is then followed in the Spring by rigorous debudding.

Previous experiments with grass cover proved to be unsatisfactory (increased risk of frost damage and excessive competition for water in the summer) hence the land is worked mechanically to keep weeds at bay and in the steeper slopes soil washed down by erosion is carried back up again.

Come harvest time, the pickers make a first selection in the vineyards and the grapes are then sorted again at the cellar. The use of only the healthiest, ripest fruit is considered of such prime importance that this task is reserved for family members and only the most experienced workers. After which, the work in the cellar is distinctly non-interventionist, the goal being to allow each terroir to express itself as fully as possible, hence the minimum extraction and very restrained use of oak.

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