Domaine de la Bongran - Viré-Clessé

Jean Gautier Thevenet

There are some winemakers that are so ground-breaking that the Oxford Companion to Wine sees fit to give them their own entry. Jean Thevenet and his son Gautier are two of them. It’s difficult to concisely explain their work without getting quite technical but their wines are the very antithesis of mass market productions. To start with, the Thevenets pick their grapes later than all their neighbours. We’re not just talking a few days late; weeks and sometimes more than a month later. This is a point noticed by his fellow winemakers. “Ah, Thevenet,” they say, “The late one!” The resultant grapes are so powerfully concentrated that his wines are unlike anything else in the world. Deep, opulent and sometimes with a little residual sugar, a gift from selected grapes with noble rot. The entire, eye-opening operation is organic and only natural yeasts are used.