Domaine Guillot-Broux

In 1954, Pierre and Jeannine Guillot started the first organic vineyard in Burgundy. The date is worth weighing: it was decades before there was a label to certify it, a market to pay for it or a movement to join.

The domaine as such was created in 1978 by Jacqueline and Jean-Gérard Guillot, Pierre's son. From 1983 Jean-Gérard cleared and replanted the estate on very definite terms: low-yield rootstocks, high planting density and simple Guyot pruning.

Organic certification came in 1991, thirty-seven years after his father began working that way.

Their sons Patrice and Emmanuel run it today. Seventeen hectares in Cruzille, in the southern Mâconnais, across three appellations — Mâcon-Cruzille in red and white, Mâcon-Chardonnay in white and Bourgogne in red — with just three varieties: chardonnay, gamay and pinot noir.

Their oldest pinot noir parcel was replanted with grafts brought from Pommard, on a slope of marl and limestone.