Saumaize-Michelin

An Atherton Wine Imports Direct Domaine

Although Saumaize-Michelin is not widely recognized in the United States, top French publications such as Bourgogne Aujord’hui and Bettane & Desseauve’s Vins de France have been touting the wines for years. Roger Saumaize owns some of the best vineyards in Vergisson, the area in Pouilly that produces the wines with the best acidity and most length. Thanks to those vineyards and Roger’s excellent vineyard management and winemaking skills, his domaine is one of the very top producers in the Macon. Even though the wines frequently match the quality of many Premier Crus from the more renowned Cotes d’Or, they are quite reasonably priced and rank among of the greatest values in Burgundy.

As of 2005, all of the vineyards are farmed bio-dynamically.

Allen Meadows on Domaine Saumaize-Michelin:

“I have enormous respect for Roger Saumaize because his vineyard work is second to none…. While some in Burgundy talk the talk, Saumaize is the real deal when it comes to an intimate understanding of each and every parcel. What is important though is that the quality of the wines reflect the high quality vineyard work and as the scores attest, these are some of the very best wines made today in the Mâcon and what is equally impressive, is that the quality of the wines is consistent from the bottom to the top of the range” (Burghound, Oct 2003).

Roger Saumaize on the 2006 vintage:

“opulent vintage with a very high maturity of the underlying phenolics. September was very calm and warm and brought the grapes to excellent ripeness levels. One of the problems though was that the grapes had very thin skins, probably from all the water that we had in August and even though we harvest manually with small cases to avoid excess weight, some of the grapes still burst. Quantities were barely average though sugars were good at around 13.5% and acidities, while not high, were adequate and I did not acidify. Even though the crop seemed very clean, I decided to do a longer than normal lees settling just to be sure that there was no hidden rot and the musts were heavy in protein so I thought it was prudent. Overall, the wines are rich and forward and will please many people though perhaps purists less so.” (Burghound, Oct 2007).

Roger Saumaize on the 2005 vintage:

“characterized by very low yields of around 25 hl/ha, which is about 40% less than what we usually bring in. We had an extremely dry growing season plus some parcels were still negatively affected by the severe hail storms that hit us in 2004. On the plus side, the crop was extremely clean with very good sugars that were mostly in the 12.5 to 13% range with a few parcels hitting 13.5%. The alcoholics were extremely slow to finish and I still have a few wines that have not fermented to complete dryness yet. Similarly, the malos were very late though by June everything had finally finished. For me, 2005 is an excellent if not truly great vintage and I would put it on a par with 2002.” (Burghound, Oct 2006).

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