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BURGUNDY
– STYLE –
Sylvain Martinand has been the winemaker at the Bailly-Lapierre winery since 2008.
He matures the wines for much longer than appellation regulations stipulate
produce taut, lively and delicate Crémants. It is difficult not to draw a
parallel with the Champagnes produced by the family a stone’s throw
away. “At blind tastings, it is difficult to tell them apart”, admits
Matthieu Dangin. “Even the most seasoned tasters make mistakes”.
Admittedly, the Dangins lavish much care and attention on their
sparkling wines. Their Prestige de Narcès label, which is both fruity
and mineral, energetic and delightful, is the best example. Produced
from the oldest vines on the estate, it is made using single-vineyard
fermentation in tanks with no added sulphites. Its fine bubbles
bowled over even the American sommeliers at Madison Eleven Park,
crowned best restaurant in the world in 2017. “They didn’t have any
Crémant on the wine list. We are the first, and we have been on the
list since 2017”, says a visibly proud Matthieu Dangin. Combining
French provenance with bubbles and organic credentials, the wine
ticks all the boxes to appeal to foreign markets. Unsurprisingly,
exports represent over 80% of the company’s sales, spearheaded by
Italy, the United States and Denmark.
BAILLY-LAPIERRE, THE CATALYST FOR CRÉMANT DE
BOURGOGNE
Founded in 1972, the Bailly-Lapierre winery is inseparable from the
history of Crémant de Bourgogne. Sparkling base wines, which were
then sold en masse to Germany, were experiencing a serious crisis
and winegrowers in the Auxerre region found themselves with vines
and wines on their hands, with no storage space or sales outlets.
They decided to create a co-operative winery, which they set up in a
32 SUMMER 2021 GILBERT & GAILLARD - THE FRENCH EXPERTS ON WINE