Chateau de Lavernette Beaujolais-Villages 2013

The commune of Leynes and its old four-story Chateau de Lavernette are right at the crossroads of Beaujolais and the Maconnais. Down across the road from the chateau, to the east, grows a Chardonnay vineyard in limestone soil for its crémant and Beaujolais Blanc. Up on the broad slope just southwest of the chateau grows Gamay in granite soil for its two red Beaujolais, plus two small parcels of Chardonnay in more limey soils that are reserved for its Bourgogne Blanc. Across a tiny creek to the north of the chateau is the southern boundary of the Pouilly-Fuissé appellation. A hill goes steeply up from that creek to the village of Chaintré, and on this flank the chateau farms four small parcels in limestone to make two Pouilly-Fuissé cuvées. A third cuvée of Pouilly-Fuissé is made from a parcel that grows near the top of the long hill west of the chateau. Not far from this parcel the hill summits and then falls northward into the deep bowl where the village of Fuissé sits. The geography here is nothing if not compact.

The chateau has been passed down through the Lavernette family since 1596, when Philibert Bernard de Lavernette bought the property from the monks of Tournus. It was a Seigneurie, or lordship, and as such a seat of power that administered justice in the area. (Those decisions, along with tax records, land deeds and the like, are recorded in ledgers in the Lavernette library, and have been studied by historians.) Documents from 1684 inventory two wine presses and four large vats on the property, but no doubt vineyards and wine making were part of Lavernette's makeup long before this. Early in the twentieth century, René de Boissieu married Gabriëlle Bernard de Lavernette, the heiress of Lavernette, and the property passed to the de Boissieu family. Today the twin shields on the Lavernette labels represent the coat of arms of the two families.

René was the grandfather of Bertrand de Boissieu who, with his Dutch wife Anke, was until recently the director of Lavernette. Bertrand and Anke were the first in the Beaujolais region to farm according to the ecological principles of lutte raisonnée, or reasoned fight, a pragmatic approach to organic farming that was, in their younger days, a radical thing in France. Beginning in 2006, their son Xavier, with his American wife Kerrie, took this one step further by converting the chateau’s 28 acres of vineyards to biodynamic farming. Certification came in 2010.

Xavier did an internship in New Zealand, followed by one at the Saintsbury winery in California. There he met an enologist, Kerrie O'Brien. They were married at Lavernette in 2006. In 2007 they purchased the parcel of Vers Chane near the summit of the hill that borders Fuissé, and in 2012 they bought three small parcels adjacent to their Gamay parcels. Today, apart from the parcel of Vers Chane, Xavier has his vines growing in homogeneous zones on three sides of the property.