Les Champs de l’Abbaye
Certified Biodynamic (Demeter)
Aluze, Côte Chalonnaise
If ever there were a story of love and–not just of–wine, this is it. Alain Hasard and his partner Isabelle lived and worked in Paris, together breathing in deeply the culture of food and wine, as well as for a time working on restaurant floor as sommeliers. They share an attunement to life, not just to wine and its unique ways of being, but also to how it can bring people together, bringing not just joy but meaning to life’s routines. Thus inspired, Isabelle and Alain sought a way to commune with the source of wines, which is to say the vineyards themselves.
In the late 1990s, Les Champs de l’Abbaye was born–the product of a single purchased parcel in the western Côte Chalonnaise (Côtes du Couchois), which extends the limestone soils of the Cote d’Or directly north but finds itself on a much less continuous slope. Here, in the hands of dedicated and rigorous vignerons, wines from the region are, of extremely high quality, particularly in Rully and Mercurey, where a few top names have shown the world what is possible.
Notoriety is not really in the lexicon of Alain and Isabelle. Instead, their work is inward-looking, imbued with a passionate attention to the sites they farm and a pathos of care to the wines they produce and the people they meet. They have, in fact, made their tiny domaine smaller over the years, farming themselves while making over a dozen wines, so that their work remains no less vigiland as they age. In short, they care about these natural places in themselves, recognizing how these places are not just the crucial determinant of the wines they produce, but also the lives they themselves lead.
From their home base in Aluze, they farm single plots of high-density plantings of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, including top lieu-dits Rully La Chatalienne and Les Cailloux and in Mercurey as well. Yields are excruciatingly low (~20-30hl/ha), thus production is even smaller and more precious than surface area of the domaine implies. Winemaking is without additions other than the use of sulfur at bottling. Alain says simply that the wines are intended to be evocative of their place and time; I would only add that their generosity, energy, and love are evocative of their makers as well.
Wines:
● Les Champs de l’Abbaye Côte Chalonnaise Blanc “Les Oxfordiennes”
● Les Champs de l’Abbaye Rully Blanc “La Chatalienne”
● Les Champs de l’Abbaye Rully Blanc “Les Cailloux”
