Some fifteen years ago we celebrated the rise of Priorat, where several Bordeaux-trained winemakers were making bold, rich wines in the vein of what was popularized at that point - look to a few critics for their heavy-handed influence there! Today, the region has come almost full circle, epitomized in the Nin-Ortiz collaboration which honors the teachings of Nicolas Joly, bringing biodynamics, precision and delicacy to a historically important region.

Nin-Ortiz

In every region there are traditionalists and radicals, but Ester Nin straddles both sides. A native of the Alt Penedes, she worked as a viticulturist in the Priorat following her studies in biology at the University of Barcelona, and earned her way to working for Daphne Glorian at Clos i Terrasses - you may know the Clos Erasmus well. Part of the Gratallops Project in Priorat, Daphne looked to Ester to convert the entire estate to biodynamic viticulture. Gaining a strong foothold in the region's geology and temperament, Ester purchased her own plots on the steep hillsides above Priorat in 2004. As luck would have it, there was another aspiring enologist not too far away, seemingly destined to collide course. 

Carles Ortiz and Ester today form Familia Nin-Ortiz, bringing together their 6.5 hectares and their combined know-how to coax incredible depth and precision from their wrought, old vines. The emphasis on biodynamics mean a strong eye to the health of the vines, which, tunneled into essentially dense rock rather than soil produce a more elegant, mineral-focused version of the region's grapes that we had long associated with broad, powerful wines. 

All processes in the vineyard are guided by hand, plowed by mule, and again tended to by hand in the winery to assure the greatest quality and preservation of the most delicate flavors and aromas. 

Marco Pezzuto is part of the ongoing revolution of young, talented producers emerging from the Roero, which has continually proven to be a terrific source of wines of great finesse and brightness in contrast to the boldness and firm structure from the Langhe. With his first release in 2024, Marco's wines are captivating in their freshness, exuberance and drinkability while also showing a window to his promising talent as a vigneron within one of our favorite regions.

Marco Pezzuto

To introduce you to these wines, I'm going to jump to one of the last things said in our meeting, through interpreter Tom Myers: "These are wines that make you smile. Complexity doesn't need to be complicated."

That was In July of 2024, when we as a team had the opportunity to sit with the ebullient Marco Pezzuto, whose natural passion couldn't be contained by his lack of English fluency. The question posed to Tom, rather than Marco was, "Knee-jerk reaction, how do Marco's wines strike you?" And Tom's response perfectly captured what we had seen emitting from the man sitting next to him for the duration.

Marco says he came to the vineyards at a very young age, and was taken by the process, eventually enrolling in a local oenologically-focused high school. In 2006 he first worked a vineyard, and in 2007 he took his first job with a winery in Roero, the appellation within which he had grown up. Working with wineries within Roero and the Langhe provided a wealth of experience, exposing Marco to a variety of different styles; he admits that early on, he saw the Roero winemakers trying to more mirror the Langhe styles, as they had more successfully caught on commercially. Today, the pendulum has swung again, and Marco - along with Stefano Occhetti, another Roero native - is in the midst of those homegrown, talented young producers.

Bees. It was bees that framed Marco's understanding and led to his success. In 2017, he resigned from the winery to pursue a beekeeping as a vocation, eventually renting his first piece of land in 2018 which he would plant for himself that year. He grew his colonies from 200 families to 400, packaging his own honey and selling some in bulk. As his vineyard began to grow, just as he cared for his bees and what he surrounded them with in terms of crops, he too saw the level of care of the land impact the vines. From the original thought of creating wine to sell was borne the ideal of attaching his name to a label, to something he was proud of - all because of bees!

In 2021, Marco was able to create his first wine from his 2018 planting; he saw surprising promise in those wines, which emboldened him enough to seek out more vineyards to rent, more vines to give a solid base to the Marco Pezzuto domaine. In 2023, an opportunity was presented to rent a vineyard in Roero with plantings from 1950 & 1980; from his past experience he had seen that older vines would lend a more serious level of complexity, adding to the youthful exuberance of his own vineyard.

Marco acknowledges Roero for what it is, rather than trying to create other styles within it; while he admits he is still searching for his own style, what he's already created represents beautifully the direction of what we love about Roero. He admits he doesn't look to many producers as inspirations in terms of style, but rather their energy and impact. "So much of the other producers' wines are place-determined, so it doesn't make sense to use as a reference. There's a search in the Langhe to make wines with more finesse, more drinkable, whereas it's easier to do that in Roero," says Marco. Anyone who he looks to has created "An energy and a spirit in their wines," he says.

Back to Tom's musing on Marco's wines, he continued: "I see a great maturity in the wines already, in that he's not trying to overplay his hand. That's difficult when you're trying to find your way. Ultimately, they are fun to drink, but they have a sense of wisdom about them." Says Marco, "Terroir to me is not only the soil and microclimate, but also the person in the vineyard and winery. I want the wines to be complex but drinkable - on so many occasions, wines can seem like a bomb in the glass but you have trouble finishing them. I want an impressive nose, but I want you to be able to finish it quickly!"

Viticulture & Vinification

Marco crafts his wines within a cantina underneath his grandfather's house that he renovated, and will be adding additional equipment to in 2024, including temperature-controlled tanks for future warm vintages. He claims his winemaking process is "very simple" - for the red and rosato, he pays very close attention to the macerations, tasting consistently multiple times per day to capture "What I want and nothing more." Translation: these are wines of delicacy and brightness, the extractions controlled.

Without the addition of sulfur, the fermentations take off rather quickly. Most are fermented in wood, and all wines will age in wood, a small portion of which is new, given the rather small size and short history of the domaine. In the future, there will be cement tanks both for fermenting and aging.

In the vineyard, the processes are organically-focused; he saw early on with his bee colonies that they reacted very well to the strength of the soil stimulating the health of the flora surround them, so he will utilize his own compost that he's enriched with microorganisms, earthworms, and also the chipped & composted vine clippings from the year prior - one of the tenets of biodynamic viticulture in its cyclical nature.

With the 2023 vintage supplying 2 out of the 3 wines, the massive hailstorm in early July left him with about 10-15% of his expected crop, leaving almost no leaves on the vines. However, the lively soils contributed to incredible health of the remaining fruit, and Marco has been quite happy with the results. Eventually, he expects to create between 8-10,000 bottles each year; he doesn't want to go beyond his reach, to maintain that same energy and spirit (that he has so aspired to) within his own wines.

About the Label

"The logo is a stylized representation of a gentleman holding a child - actually it is a picture of my grandfather holding me as a child on a particular day, My grandfather in all his life had never seen the sea. And that day he had only come there because I had been there for a week and he couldn't last without seeing me for another week. However, he was on the beach all day in his long pants and tank top - that's why it's a picture that is very tender to me. That tells me about a generation of people who lived a lifetime of toil, who lived through the war, who worked just so they could eat (not in a starred restaurant but to feed themselves), who kept our area alive in the years when it was easier to go to the city and work in the factory. But most of all it represents my grandfather, the one who taught me that hard work and hard work get you where you want to go, who taught me that music is cheerfulness and celebration, that celebration and cheerfulness are important even if it is not all easy...and so many other things. My biggest regret is he cannot see what I am trying to do today, but that I am also doing it in his name." -Marco

Guffens-Heynen

The year is 2020. Guffens-Heynen wines had been absent from the US market for over a decade; however, they remained one of the most sought-after domaines for true, ear-to-the-ground Burgundy collectors. We had enjoyed various vintages in Europe and Japan, but due to the 10 year gap of not having a US importer, we wanted to seek out the wines and understand them a bit more. A close friend in the know introduced us; arriving at the estate for the initial visit, we soon spent nearly 9 hours conversing about wine and life.

Coming away from this experience, we realize that we talk so much about focusing on young winemakers who are helping to re-define the future of winemaking - winemakers who are making bold, yet smart changes, and practicing healthy viticulture. It may not seem that Jean-Marie fits into this category, but he does in more ways than one! Jean-Marie and his wife Maine settled in Vergisson in 1976. Despite making wine since 1980, and quickly gaining attention with the banner 1982 vintage, so many of our best collectors had never heard of the estate. With the emphasis today on buzzwords of "sustainable" and "biodynamic" - words which we do feel so often can possess a true value in the right hands - we instead find Jean-Marie Guffens who cannot be defined by either a grape, region or method, and certainly not a region. He is a style unto himself.

After arriving in Vergisson from Belgium, they immediately immersed themselves into learning about winemaking and acquired their first plots of Pierreclos in 1979. Since the early 80s, Jean Marie has been pushing to prove that great Chardonnay doesn't solely come from the Côte de Beaune., nor does it have to have a Premier or Grand Cru designation on the label. His first official vintage was 1982, with the wines from Vergisson, followed by starting the negociant label Verget in 1990, which has in and of itself gained significant acclaim.

VITICULTURE | GUFFENS-HEYNEN

Guffens believes in making honest wines, and is propelled by the belief that his region of Macon can create wines of legendary quality; judging by some of the remarks of critics over the last few decades, few disagree with Guffens at all. Through his varied trials in the vineyards, Jean-Marie's methodologies were firmly in the camp of "less is more" - in fact, he coined the term "non-cultivation" to describe his approach. Whereas many a vigneron would have manicured the vine rows and ploughed regularly, Guffens would instead only plow once and very shallow, and continue to mow the cover crop throughout the year while allowing the vine to be "guided, not restrained." His argument is that maintaining the grass through the year, rather than ploughing it in will both reduce soil compaction and limit nitrogen; the resulting grapes are higher in acidity, smaller (leading to more concentration), and in conjunction with not de-leafing or hedging (which stimulates growth), promotes the vine churning all of its energy into the fruit.

The result? Guffens' clusters are wildly small with tiny grapes; yields are routinely around 37-38 hectoliters per hectare, and the small grapes lend a higher ratio of solids-to-juice; this means more dry extract, or, in more everyday terms, a less dilute and more concentrated flavor. Ripeness is always desired, and so there will be repeated "tries" through the vineyard over multiple weeks to ensure the clusters are picked at ideal times. In total, the Domaine wines’ now consist of 5.65 hectares in Vergisson, Pierreclos, and Davaye.

VINIFICATION | GUFFENS-HEYNEN

As important as picking ripe grapes is in the vineyard, pressing may be one of the most crucial parts of winemaking to Jean-Marie. The grapes are lightly crushed before being pressed. In the winery a modified Coquard press is used; this is also uncommon in Burgundy but more common in Champagne where delicacy is the name of the game. Much like Champagne, where the press cycles are intended to be separated by the regional laws, Jean-Marie will separate his free-run juice - the juice provided only by the weight of the grapes themselves - and the different cycles of the press; by doing so, he will be able to create his wild array of wines that are kaleidoscopic in flavors by virtue of varying levels of density via the pressure under which the grapes were squeezed.

For the most prized vineyards, the free-run and first-press juice is of utmost importance as it is both delicate and low in pH - meaning high-acidity which is hugely important for wines of such ripeness as the Guffens wines are. In short, sorting, fermenting and blending are performed intuitively, which is mirrored by the creative labeling that knows no bounds. Certain vineyards and wines are routinely repeated - Croux et Petits Croux, Juliette et les Vieilles de Chavigne, etc. - but there are no limits to what Guffens and his winemaker, Julien, can create in any given vintage. The top wines routinely are fermented in barrel, while the young-vine plots will be fermented in concrete. A varying amount of new oak is used, while batonnage is performed multiple times throughout to stimulate a healthy culture in the wine. Ultimately, as Guffens says, each wine "began with an idea." To translate that, no wine is formulaic; the signature here is that of vibrancy, feeling and a true sense of spirit, if not place.

We should note that, as with the wines of Guffens and Verget , there is not a formula by which either the winemakers or we as the importers can provide a simple, bulleted list for each wine. Thus, we have made each and every wine's description a bit of a conversation, and include bits of Jean-Marie's notes from his yearly letter which we are happy to share below:/b>

JEAN-MARIE GUFFENS' NOTES ON THE 2024 VINTAGE

"The harvests were very small at all three estates. At Domaine Guffens-Heynen, Julien has been in charge of the day-to-day management for the past year and assists me during the winemaking process. Our collaboration couldn't have been better, as the vintage was very complicated. Thanks to the improvements he proposed and organized in harvest reception, we were able to harvest each plot on the right day. This allowed us to double the daily harvest while reducing the workload, all without changing our philosophy. The result is astounding. The few people who have tasted these wines have all been dazzled by the precision on the nose, the fruity attack, and the length on the palate. I thought we could do as well as in 2014, but I'm sure we'll surpass it."

JEAN-MARIE GUFFENS' NOTES ON THE 2023 VINTAGE

Dear friends,
I'm not going to repeat Julien's comments on the climate from last year. Ultimately 2023 is in every way similar to 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022. It gets complicated and boring. The 2023s had a lot of water in the spring which avoided some water stress. For the rest, we once again went from a large harvest to a normal harvest due to the extreme heat which once again caused a blockage of ripeness. The vintage is, however, less marked by these conditions and is more similar to the 2020s than the 2022s. We can therefore speak more of a year of terroir than of heat. And so much the better.