Tasted with Alexandre Fefeu in Yrouerre, 15 May 2024

Domaine Fontaine de Chaule
3 rue de l’Orangerie
89700 Yrouerre
Alexandre’s Instagram

Yrouerre is a sleepy but pretty old village way off the beaten track in the Yonne; it boasts less than 200 inhabitants but just outside the village is the border with the Petit Chablis appellation…

The vines of this new domaine date from 1988, planted by Alexandre’s grandfather who lives nearby. Officially, these are Pouilly-sûr-Serein vines – just 0.93 hectares worth – but these 17 rows of vines are nearly 500 metres long and are the last vines on the border with Chablis… The field at the side (right) is also classed as Petit Chablis but it’s not planted.

The main activity of the family here is cereal – 230 hectares – then there’s another 30 hectares with Charolais cows. These grapes were always sold at the time of harvest to a domaine in Prehy…

Alexandre’s first vintage was 2022, which I tasted in Chablis in January… 6,600 bottles were produced in 2022 – it could be could be 8k in 2023. “I was very lucky to start with 22 – the frost nearly took it all in 21. There was a little frost this year but with very late pruning, I’m hoping that not much was lost. We had a few hail impacts on the leaves but we didn’t see any on the flowers at this stage… It takes me 2 days to harvest.”

Alexandre is launching his ‘maison’ this year so is hoping to find more surface of vines – certainly intending to buy some grapes at the vines – “I don’t want to spend all my time pruning vines… Patrick Puize has been a bit of an inspiration,” and Alexandre has worked with Patrick too… 20k bottles is currently a good target for Alexandre – “and it will bring me a bit more credibility too!”

Alexandre on 2023:
“In terms of quality, I think 23 is going to resemble 2018, and with okay acidity. I saw fewer maladies here than in 2022. We triage at the vine so of course manually harvest. There’s about 9 months of elevage and I will bottle from about June-July… There’s about 20% wood used for elevage – larger champagne barrels of around 350-l. I like this size but I don’t want to taste the barrel. I do both the fermentation and malo in barrel – apart from a fining and only filtering if necessary there are no additions other than sulfur. I hope that I never need to use enzymes – so far not. Sulfur is just a first addition after the malo, and if there are no volatiles, the wines stay on their lees…”

The wines…

Having tasted a very nice wine I wanted to visit. This should be an interesting domaine to follow…

Note from wine tasted in January:

2022 La Fontaine de Chaule, Petit Chablis
An airy width – this nose seems nice an clean. Lots of mouth-filling energy – certainly a hint of CO₂. The finishing flavours are wide and delicious too – particularly here!