GIVRY

François Lumpp started as a grower in the family domaine in 1977, but then separated from his brother and set up on his own with four hectares of vines in 1991. He and his wife Isabelle have gradually grown the vineyard to reach nine and a half hectares. They are delighted that they have now been joined by two of their children, Pierre and Anne-Cécile.

François is a passionate viticulturalist and places great emphasis on making the wine in the vineyards, which are farmed with minimum intervention to allow the terroir to express itself fully. In practice this means very careful choice of plant material to give the highest quality results (often at the expense of yield). From 2013, they changed their pruning system to limit yields and also to prevent disease of the woody part of the vines. They have not used weedkillers since 1995, preferring to till and hoe. At the beginning of the season they use treatments appropriate to organic viticulture (copper sulphate) as a preventative, but later in the season, if disease threatens, they prefer to use conventional treatments in order to limit the total number of times they have to send the tractors in. Green harvesting will be used if required to limit yields and ensure even ripening.

At harvest, the pickers sort the grapes carefully at each vine, and then they are checked again on the sorting table, so that only the highest quality fruit is used. François aims to pick at 'just ripe' rather than into overripe, and wants to make bright wines which are developed rather than masked by their time in barrel. François adjusts the level of new wood to suits the vintage, using some one year-old and some two year-old barrels as well, The whites get around 30% new wood, and he uses up to 70% on the reds. The domaine has quite a following among value-conscious Burgundy fans, but it's fair to say that if he was in the Côte d'Or he would be even better-known.