New to our range: Rougeot Père & Fils, Meursault

The Domaine Rougeot Père & Fils in Meursault was founded by Henri Rougeot and is now run as a family estate in its fourth generation by Pierre-Henri alongside his father Marc. The estate covers 12.6 hectares of vineyards and produces around 60% white wine and 40% red wines.

The narrative of family tradition and devotion to wine is often the thread that binds Burgundian estates together across centuries. The name Rougeot, too, has been associated with viticulture for nine generations. However, it was Henri Rougeot who, just four generations ago, took decisive action and established Domaine Rougeot Père & Fils, which has operated ever since under the same address with a clear line of succession.

Click here for the wines of Domaine Rougeot, Meursault

The estate’s buildings and part of the surrounding vineyards were once owned by the Hospices de Beaune, which cultivated fruit trees on this site. Henri’s son Hubert, an enterprising building contractor and mayor of Meursault for 25 years, had the orchards cleared and planted Chardonnay instead. As this land was not classified for viticulture, the wines may only be sold as Bourgogne Côte d’Or, even though the vineyard lies in the heart of Meursault, close to the prestigious Les Chevaliers cru, on excellent soils.

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During the 1960s and 1970s, the estate took on its present form under Hubert Rougeot: after taking over from his father Henri, he expanded the domaine by acquiring vineyards in Volnay and Pommard, whilst his brother was able to purchase the Premier Crus Charmes and Monthélie.

In addition, the estate took on the management of a further 50 hectares belonging to Domaine de Meursault. There was plenty to do, yet Hubert was more of a businessman and busy entrepreneur than a winemaker, so he handed the estate over to his son Marc. Like his father, Marc was not a winemaker by passion; rather, he saw wine primarily as a means of earning a living. Thus, in the mid-1990s, he began developing his wines as a négociant, supplying French supermarket chains under fixed contracts. The estate continued producing négociant wines until 2016, when his son Pierre-Henri made a radical break, withdrew from that business and lost 85% of his market overnight. It is at this point that the story really gathers pace.

Pierre-Henri Rougeot spent two years at the Lycée Viticole in Beaune before joining Domaine de Montille. There he worked both in the cellar and in the vineyards, developing a passion and dedication to wine that he had always found lacking in his father and grandfather. Encouraged by his father to explore every facet of the market, he subsequently moved to a wine merchant and then to an exporter. He later spent several years working for a local cooper, where he remained employed part-time until 2019.

Pierre-Henri has been fully responsible for the vinification of the wines since 2010. His father quickly recognised that his son was driven by great passion and even greater talent, and willingly handed over the cellar to him. And since, in Pierre-Henri’s view, there can be no good wine from poor soils, he took his first tentative steps towards organic viticulture as early as 2012. The decisive factor was a number of vineyard sites that repeatedly suffered from premature oxidation (premox) and whose wines, despite their respectable provenance, appeared unbalanced and lacking harmony.

According to Pierre-Henri, the organic approach brought about a significant improvement in quality, and so the course was irrevocably set: with the 2016 vintage, he terminated the collaboration with supermarkets. The style of wine produced until then and the prices achieved in this market segment simply fell short of the potential offered by these excellent historic terroirs. Moreover, they fell far below the standards that Pierre-Henri set for himself as a winemaker.

Severely affected by spring frosts, the 2016 harvest was correspondingly small; however, the quality was impressive and allowed, for the first time, vinification according to his own exacting standards. This circumstance seemed only to reinforce the decision to take this existential step, and as a logical consequence, Pierre-Henri and Marc Rougeot registered the estate for conversion to organic viticulture. Since the 2020 vintage, Domaine Rougeot Père & Fils has been fully certified organic and, furthermore, has been in the process of biodynamic conversion since the beginning of 2021.

Vinification at Rougeot

In the vineyard, all work is carried out by hand, and tractor passes are reduced to a minimum to prevent soil compaction. No synthetic plant protection products are applied whatsoever.

The grapes are strictly hand-harvested into small crates, and relatively little intervention takes place in the cellar either. The Pinot grapes are sorted once again by hand and then placed, intact and unstemmed, into small vats. This is followed by spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts and gentle maturation without the addition of sulphur, ensuring the most transparent expression possible of origin and terroir. Each vineyard site is vinified separately, followed by two or three punch-downs (pigeages) for gentle extraction of colour and tannins.

Chardonnay and Aligoté are pressed or crushed with their stems and then kept in larger vessels at 10°C until the coarse lees have settled. The clear must is then transferred to barrels for fermentation. Both white and red wines are matured exclusively in 228-litre Burgundy barrels, with a deliberately low proportion of new wood, for 12 to 20 months without bâtonnage.

For both his red and white wines, Pierre-Henri initially refrains from adding sulphur. This allows him to bottle certain barrels, depending on their development, with minimal sulphur addition or entirely without SO2. In such cases, the wines are marketed with white, diagonal labels bearing the name of the lieu-dit. Wines with added sulphur appear under the regular, classic label. All wines are bottled the following March/April, unfined and unfiltered.

Text and wine expertise: Sebastian Bordthäuser