“It’s a great playground,” Valentine Mathieu mused, grinning. This is the energy she and husband Stephane have infused into their slice of Beaujolais, and without a doubt, they are incredibly grateful for the region of Fleurie they now call home. It wasn’t always this way, though.
“You’re just a bastard,” says Stephane with a laugh, recounting what his friend Yann Bertrand had exclaimed when learning the Mathieus had purchased the 5.5 hectare plot of Les Labourons. Bertrand had sought more than a decade for the perfect plot, and here come the self-professed “outsiders” - no family vineyards, two harvests under Valentine’s belt - with the score of the century.
Valentine & Stephane first met in 2011 when studying the commerce of the wine world - Valentine in marketing, Stephane in business with the Rothschild family in Bordeaux. Something tugged at them both, largely influenced by the couple’s trips to where Stephane had grown up, near Fleurie, running around neighborhood vineyards. “We both loved Gamay,” says Valentine, “But we were unable to create our own Domaine without one of us having gone to oenological school.” In 2019, Valentine quit, doing her studies from home while surrounded by her three children. Her first harvest was at Chartogne-Taillet, where aside from winemaking, her conversations with Alexandre Chartogne largely centered around bioindicative plantings, teachings that had been largely compiled by Gérard Ducerf, local to Beaujolais.
Her second harvest was performed at Chateau Thivin (Brouilly), where she learned under the Geoffray family, but also got to learn from conversations with Jacques Néauport, a disciple of Jules Chauvet, who was dubbed the “godfather of natural wine”. It was in this arena the Valentine began to grasp the Beaujolais way, and the carbonic macerations that make Gamay from the region so emblematic.
“We both love Beaujolais,” Stephane professed, “But above all, we were looking for delicacy, freshness, and altitude.” The search mainly circled around Fleurie of Julienas, and with the help of their network, the timing in 2021 proved fortuitous; Christophe Pacalet (Marcel Lapierre’s nephew, cousin of Philippe) was selling his Fleurie parcel, an old vineyard with 1970s-architectural buildings, named “Les Labourons.” “It was perfect,” remembers Valentine; “A cuvage (winery), a house, a cellar, and even housing for pickers, some twenty to twenty-five concrete tanks…no temperature-control, but we can rebuild that from A to Zed.” What was even more perfect was the raw material: Gamay vines dating back to 1951 on deep, sandy granitic soils, in what Valentine called a “Very woodsy, very preserved place.” In other words, for someone having studied the intermingling of plants, animals and vines, perfect.
WIth Valentine working mostly alone as Stephane maintained his day job, 2021 was the first harvest, splitting fruit with Pacalet - his last involvement with Les Labourons. With the confidence imbued upon the Mathieu family, the search for vineyards did not relent. Stephane had dreamed since he was a little boy of the vineyard he grew up playing in; this vineyard, with the view of the stunning Mont Blanc, possessed the energy that had never left him since his childhood. “I told the woman who owned it - she’s one hundred and two now - when I was fifteen years old, ‘I want to buy this when I grow up.’ She said she would never sell it, but when she saw how serious we were [with the purchase of Les Labourons], she relented.”
La Madone is widely known as the best terroir of Fleurie, and the Mathieus had just sealed the purchase of what they deem the finest plot within La Madone. Their (so far) final purchase was that of an 0.65 hectare plot within Chapelle des Bois with vines over fifty years old. Not bad for outsiders.
As the vintages progress, Valentine and Stephane have gained much more knowledge about their land; “We could make five or six different Labourons,” Valentine admits, “But we like it as a whole, also.” From the first vintage, they made two different bottlings; Prelude was a sum of all the vineyard’s parts; Prelude Face “B” was created from the very oldest, tightly-spaced vines. “We hated it in barrel,” Stephane admitted, “But the lees gave more texture, and after it was brilliant.” Face “B” will continue to be produced in the top vintages.
The couple feel - as do many in the village - that both La Madone and Chapelle des Bois could eventually be re-classified with Premier Cru (or even Grand Cru, the Mathieus claim) status. La Madone has thin, very rocky soils, while Chapelle des Bois’ thin granitic soils elevate the wine’s aromatics to the very essence of raspberry, Stephane admits.
Five years in to their project, Valentine and Stephane are firmly entrenched in their home, pushing for further improvements constantly. With time and money invested into the improvement of the cellar, holding the wines in barrel for two winters - an ideal for them - is becoming increasingly realistic. They are firm believers in the aging capability of Gamay, and its belonging to Beaujolais. “It’s not for nothing that Beaujolais is only Gamay,” Valentine asserts, “The grape is at home with the soils, and has the capacity to generate emotions.”
Viticulture & Vinification
Valentine handles the pruning and all of the “spring work”, while Stephane is in charge of the organic treatments, the soils, and maneuvering the tractor. Both, however, are present for the blending, and will utilize the help of their community for any analysis, combining the collective efforts.
Les Labourons has two big “faces”, North-facing and West-facing. The latter is home to the old parcel, dating back to 1951. The Northern face is picked last, as it’s very cold. A small part of the North side is home to the younger portions, planted in 2008 and 2016. As a whole, Labourons is “Stronger, more sun, full of happiness.”
In the winery, the grapes are kept cold (12-14 degrees Celsius) and then placed in a concrete vat (no lining). The fermentations occur naturally - no pied de cuve, no inoculation. La Madone typically commences its fermentation first, and in a pinch can be a source of yeast if the other tanks need encouragement.
There will be remontage (pumping over, which is done to circulate juice onto the cap, and serves to homogenize the yeast and temperature) only for the first and second day of the fermentation, which generally lasts 10 days. The grape skins will macerate with the juice for the whole duration, and the only additive is some carbon dioxide - only if needed (carbonic macerations can generate enough carbon dioxide to avoid using sulfur). No punch-downs are performed.
After the wine has been transferred to barrel or holding tank, the skins are pressed slowly, at light pressure, and the press juice will be added to the final blend “to taste”. In 2024 - a cold, hail-stunted vintage - there was about 80% loss, and the entirety of the production had its elevage in barrel. The barrels used are exclusively 500L used barrels; “A good barrel,” Stephane muses, quoting a local adage, “Is a barrel washed by good Pinot.” The 2024 release features only the Cru - Chapelle des Bois & La Madone - and Les Labourons bottlings.
