I first met Yannick about seven years ago. It was at a dinner organised by mutual friends and I’ll always remember the moment this fiery man walked in, still fuming at an argument between him and his father. It was an inter-generational dispute about the management of the vineyards but it was the day that Yannick decided to break away from the family winery and carve his own path.
In the intervening years, Yannick has worked as a sommelier in Copenhagen and London, done harvest in Lazio and Burgundy, made sake nihonshu in Japan, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something… We’ve caught up hurriedly when he passed through the Veneto in 2016, in 2018 when he was working at Terroirs and again in London at the Real Wine Fair 2019 when it turned out we were staying at the same hotel… It was a similar stroke of good luck which meant that he also happened to be in Alsace when we were passing through last week.
Emerging from the cellar with a barrel sample for the parents and toys for the kids!
Installed in the area around Rosheim, towards the northern tip of the Alsatian vineyards, Yannick farms 2 hectares of vineyards and buys between 20-30% of grapes négoce. He says that even if, one day, he increases the quantity of owned vineyards, the quantity of négoce grapes will always stay proportionate. Buying négoce affords him some wiggle room in years as difficult as 2021 when so many zones have been affected by mildew. He knows that even if his vines don’t yield the crop he wants, he’ll be able to find some interesting grapes to work with anyway.
Yannick is renting a bare-boned space, which he’s turned into a cellar with a handful of oak barrels, a few amphora (mainly knock-offs from Claus Preisinger in Austria) and the press, which was a gift from Bruno Schueller.
We tasted as many wines as we could before the kids called us away to take them to a nearby playground – fair enough, it shouldn’t only be adults who have all the fun! – but my favourites were a super pinot noir and a riesling which he described as being made with an oxidative style (i.e. not entirely filled cuve) but which just gave a very subtle edge. Most of the wines we tasted are yet to be blended before bottling so I can’t say much about the finished wines.
One thing that struck me was his style of working with pinot noir and gewürztraminer grapes – where he macerates them grappes entières . The temperature might rise to 32-35°C but that’s not a problem because Yannick says this “cooks” the stems and doesn’t extract any greenness. He crushes the grapes barefoot because he doesn’t want to break or be too harsh with the stems.
He actually harvested and vinified the 2019 vintage but the resulting wine wasn’t up to the standards he wanted, neither in terms of the grapes or during the vinification, so he decided to get rid of all the wine. When I pressed him on what he did differently in 2020, he replied, “I was much more aware about the grand cru vineyards that I farm and the importance of picking the right date for harvest and also I learnt that I need to be more precise in the winemaking.” Effectivement, when I saw Yannick’s notes for keeping track of the pigeage and of the progression of sugar levels in his pinot noir, everything is noted in miniscule detail. “That I learnt from Philipe Pacalet,” he acknowledges proudly.
Around 7000 bottles of the 2020 vintage are ready to be bottled at the end of the month or beginning of September. Most are sold already to various importers around the world, but Yannick wants to prioritize the local market to further limit the carbon footprint of his wines. That said, the production is so small that Yannick will not be accepting visits from members of the public so you’ll have to seek out his wines in some restaurants or wine bars in Strasbourg.
From what we tasted, they are super interesting wines and Yannick has a keen idea of what he wants to make happen. I look forward to seeing if he’s able to turn his dream into the wine he wants in 2021 harvest too.
To keep up-to-date, follow him on Instagram here.
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