TdB № 42 | La Compagnie de Burgondie

Tête de Bulle | № 42 – La Compagnie de Burgondie

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Introduction

LMA: Welcome to Tête de Bulle! I’m your host, Lyn M. Archer, and today, I am talking to Etienne Godard, commercial director of La Compagnie de Burgondie in Burgundy. Welcome, Etienne. Can you tell us a little bit about La Burgondie, and what you do there?

Etienne Godard: Yes, of course! Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Lyn, for having me on this program.

So, La Burgondie is a gathering of seven wineries from Burgundy.

We have Bailly Lapierre for the crémant, which we’ll talk about more in details later on, Vignerons de Buxy for the Cote Chalonnaise wines, and then Cave d’Azé and Cave de Viré for the Mâconnais, and Château de Chénas, Château des Loges, and Vignerons des Pierres-Dorées for the Beaujolais.

So we are a major actor, a major player of the Burgundy region, in a great sense, from the Auxerrois, until the deep south in the Beaujolais.

LMA: Very good, and I’ll be sure and post a map of that in the notes here:

Location and Styles

LMA: Do you want to talk a little bit about where the actual production site is? Or is it all over?

Etienne Godard: Yes, so we can speak about Bailly Lapierre. Bailly Lapierre is based in Saint Bris le Vineux, which is in the Yonne department, north of Burgundy, two hours drive from Paris, and 30 minutes drive from Chablis. So it’s really the northern part of Burgundy.

So we have all the terroir and the climate conditions and even the soils that reflect our identity are from the northern part of Burgundy.

LMA: Okay. Do you want to explain to viewers a little bit about what styles of crémants that La Burgondie produces? You produce quite a few.

Etienne Godard: Of course, yes. Bailly Lapierre the winery was created in 1972, and we are the pioneer of Crémant de Bourgogne, because the appellation (also known as AOP, or Appellation d’Origine Protégée) was created in 1975.

And we produce around 3 million bottles of crémant every year. So we are a major producer.

We focus always on quality. We age our crémant longer than what is required by the appellation. We work on low dosage, so this is really our signature.

And we have in the range around 13 different crémants. READ MORE HERE.

 

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