Lucien le Moine

Lucien Lemoine is a small, haute-couture négociant house was established by Mounir and Rotem Saouma in 1999. Their aim is to bring to the market each year a maximum of 100 barrels of premier cru and grand cru burgundy which they have raised in their vaulted cellars in Beaune according to their most exacting standards of élévage.

According to Rotem, her husband’s strength is that he can sniff out the quality and style of a vintage at a very early stage. They work closely with their barrel supplier, Stéphane Chassin, to ensure the right barrels for the style of a given wine, using wood from the Jupilles forest which is apparently the slowest growing in France, thus giving the most fine-grained wood. One hundred per cent new wood is used.

Typically the wines end up with a soft, sweet-fruit character but otherwise little other evidence of new oak, and those I have tasted have displayed good typicity of their vineyard origins. They are not cheap. JASPER MORRIS MW

There aren’t many more interesting stories in the Cote as that of Le Moine. Mounir studied divinity (I believe) at a Trappist monastery where he discovered wine and in particular Pinot and fell in love. He changed out a life of contemplation for one of winemaking and undertook a degree in oenology before moving to Burgundy and starting this tiny negociant. At le Moine they rarely make more than a barrel of any climat and the wines are always sourced from the very best plots. Whatever his trick is they tend to, in general terms, really show their respective sites and also the elevage management means that they build a silken texture. These are often some of the most seductive wines from any given vintage. ROSCOE