Bâtonnage stirs the lees back into suspension while a wine ages in barrel, building the creamy texture readers taste in Chardonnay. Here is the chemistry behind the technique, the oxidation paradox it creates, and why a generation of white Burgundy producers has been quietly putting the stick down.
Winemaking
In a Jura cellar, no one tops up the barrels. That refusal is why sommeliers worldwide are now pouring Savagnin and Vin Jaune.
In 1974, Lallemand made the first commercial wine yeast and turned native fermentation from default into conviction. The terroir-yeast claim remains unproven, but persists at wine’s most exacting addresses.
Two bottles sit on the tasting table. Same producer, same 2015 vintage, same wine in every respect except one. The…
Whole-cluster fermentation is Pinot Noir’s most consequential cellar decision: stems in or stems out, no third option. What the technique really delivers.
In the autumn of 2001, Michel Chapoutier walked into a concrete workshop on the eastern edge of Burgundy and asked…
At Romanée-Conti, the most-priced vineyard on earth, the cellar team buries cow horns packed with manure across the monopole each…
Somewhere around 2011, a generation of American Chardonnay drinkers stopped ordering Chardonnay. The phenomenon had a name, ABC (Anything But…