Domaine Lucien Muzard Santenay 1er Cru La Maladiere
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In his day, Lucien Muzard put together a remarkable string of vineyard holdings in Santenay (with tiny lots in Chassagne rouge territory and in Pommard). He began at a young age with three-quarters of an acre of vines, replanted 12 acres, then went on to buy additional parcels as they came up over the years. In 1995 he handed over the reins to his sons Claude and Herve, who immediately began domaine bottling their wine rather than selling it in bulk to negociants. Subsequently, in 2003 they purchased small bins for harvesting to keep crushing to a minimum. That same year they acquired a new temperature-controlled fermentation facility and stocked it with wooden fermentation vats, a new press, sorting table, and conveyor belt to carry grapes to vat without pumpingโall enabling great care to be taken during fermentation and ageing. In 2005 they went organic in their vineyards, and then in 2008 they began the conversion to biodynamics, attaining certification with the 2011 vintage. During the incessant rains of the long, cold spring of 2012 they abandoned certification in order to use a systematic fungicide. The calculus was simple: copper, a contact application, washes off with each rain, requiring a new application. With a little moisture pressure, no problem; with a lot of rainfall, however, the carbon footprint of a tractor combined with the compaction of the soil and the trace amounts of heavy metal poisoning the dirt add up quickly into something that is not benign at all. This calculus was made even more simple by the fact that the spring rains of 2012 were so heavy that it became impossible to drive a tractor into many vineyards. Without any treatment, the entire crop was at risk. Today, the brothers work 13.15 hectares (32.5 acres) of their own vines, and bottle these wines with mise en bouteilles a la propriete written on the labels. They farm another 3 hectares (7.5 acres) of rented vines, whose wines can be identified by mise en bouteilles dans nos caves on the labels.