A Deeper Dive Into Yannick's Work Philosophies

<p><em><strong>On working with oxygen in the cellar:</strong></em></p> <p>Before starting to vinify Riesling by direct-pressing it, I took the time to taste many wines made on this type of terroir: that is to say hard soils such as granite, schist or gneiss. These geological formations, created millions of years ago by extremely high temperatures, were literally &quot;cooked&quot;: the minerals and soils hardened at more than 1,000&deg; at the bottom of the oceans, in the center of the Earth or during volcanic episodes. What happens at such temperatures? Minerals of the same family group together: mica with mica, feldspar with feldspar.</p> <p>Let&#39;s imagine clay, a particularly chaotic soil found only on the Earth&#39;s surface. Why this exclusive location? Simply because clay represents minerals and organic matter decomposed by water and air, elements belonging to the living realm. It is teeming with bacteria and yeasts that can only decompose on the surface, precisely where water and air are found. It&#39;s comparable to our intestine: a living environment, fermenting and constantly decomposing.</p> <p>Now let&#39;s take this clay and place it under pressure and heat equivalent to 1,000 tons per cm&sup2; and 1,000&deg; temperatures like at the center of the Earth. What happens? It hardens to become schist. With even more pressure and heat, it evolves into mica-schist, and then finally into transparent garnet, just as limestone becomes marble. It then becomes hydrophobic and devoid of oxygen.</p> <p>What should we understand from all of this? These hard soil compositions are associated with the non-living, such as space or the Earth&#39;s center and surface. They belong to the cosmos, like a solar summer in a cloudless July, under high pressure, diffusing its heat.</p> <p>The opposite of this non-living world constitutes our habitat: the intestine, the planetary surface between 20 km above and 20 km below, where oxygen and water coexist. The terrestrial, the living, the water, the low pressure...</p> <p>This is why vines were historically planted on hillsides: there is clay for the link to the living (growth, fermentation) and hard soil for the non-living (flower, fruit, aromatic, tannins, bitterness).</p> <p>Is oxidation linked to oxygen and therefore to living things, to decomposition? A wine grown on clay oxidizes much more easily than a wine from hard soils, ones without affinities to oxygen. Moreover, a wine with volatile acidity, a &quot;hardening&quot; in a non-living process, can neither oxidize nor age well.</p> <p>In the past, when fermentations progressed more favorably thanks to less sunny climatic conditions &ndash; with grapes tending towards noble gray rot rather than bacterial acid rot &ndash; these wines, having grown in a living environment, continued to evolve in the bottle, with oxygen beneficially continuing this evolution.</p> <p>Another observation: even vines growing in clay soils tend towards horizontality by thickening, unlike vines planted in hard soils such as schist, which elongate more.</p> <p>With climate change, wines are becoming too influenced by pressure and heat, adopting solar notes and exuberant aromatics, as opposed to humic and fungal characteristics.</p> <p>So, quite simply, I practice oxidative aging in foudre for my white wines from hard soils: to extract them from their verticality due to their hydrophobic and oxygen-deprived soils, in order to open them up to life and fluidity.</p> <p>The soil guides winemaking as much as climate: everything is linked. A rainy year will evoke clay through its connection to life, while an overly sunny year will evoke hard soil. The idea is to bring the opposite to create balance. In Burgundy, soils composed of clay and porous limestone require avoiding excess oxygen due to the risk of oxidation. In the Jura, the blue marls are reductive, hydrophobic, and devoid of oxygen: oxidative aging is therefore used.</p> <p>Grape juice, undergoing organic fermentation, transcribes the climate and the soil, thus becoming their revealer. As you know: the page is the soil, the grape the ink.</p> <p><em><strong>On his affinity for volatile acidity:</strong></em></p> <p>Volatile acidity brings umami and is also a way for me to break out of the ever-perfectionist straitjacket imposed by the appellation and the social pressure of those who uphold good taste. Breaking out of it to bring charm, imagination and poetry, to thumb my nose at the wine that fits into the boxes.</p> <p>Specifically with Gew&uuml;rztraminer, I like to induce acetate during the maceration by filling the tank to the brim: the yeasts will react with the bacteria and the oxygen to develop the acetate, which will give a candy-like quality and a sensation of sweetness to the wine, characteristics that are perfectly suited to Gew&uuml;rztraminer.</p> <p><em><strong>On pigeages:&nbsp;</strong></em></p> <p>The idea behind pigeage is to feed the dominant indigenous yeasts to develop day by day and overpower the bacteria. Temperatures rise naturally because of the energy created, and then I open the vat to release the excess carbonic aromas. Also, the rising temperature helps eliminate the tannin-protein association&nbsp;through flocculation.</p> <p><em><strong>On blending vintages together:</strong></em></p> <p>Every wine is defined by terrestrial and the cosmos. I define terrestrial as what the wine gets from the vine and the soil: minerality, acidity, drinkability. In constrast, I define the cosmos as qualities&nbsp;linked to solar energy: aromatics, color, depth, structure.</p> <p>Vinegar is based on bacteria and botrytis on fungus. In such,&nbsp;vinegar implies death and fungus implies life: decomposition in contrast to fermentation. 20 years ago, there was no vinegar in the vines, only botrytis, and this is entirely linked to climate change. Pinot Noir, which I esteem is no longer adapted to Alsace and Burgundy, continues to turn to vinegar in the vines in solar years.&nbsp;</p> <p>I&#39;ve increasingly started to blend vintages a lot in order to regain the balance that we&#39;ve lost with climate change. What I mean is that years that combine a rainy spring with a sunny summer are becoming rarer. So I&#39;ve decided to blend a rainy year with a warm year to restore the lost balance of a season that was normal. This way, we find the depth, tannins, color, and aromas of a warm year, combined with the fluidity and minerality of a rainy year.</p> <p><em><strong>On his one of a kind pruning technique:</strong></em></p> <p>This pruning method comes to us from Marceau Bourdarias, a specialist in plant physiology. Many of his concepts are inspired by the work of Olivier Husson, an expert in oxidation and reduction. The fundamental idea is based on this principle: when a plant suffers a pathogen attack, it oxidizes and loses its electrons, causing a decrease in reduction and, consequently, increased oxidation. This phenomenon is observed during the treatment season with diseases such as downy mildew or powdery mildew, but also during the winter period with esca, which penetrates the plant.</p> <p>This is why my interventions aim to reduce this oxidation by strengthening the reduction processes. For my treatments, I use bacterial fermentations enriched with zeolite that feed the leaf and plant with electrons, thus maintaining their reduction. This approach is similar to the probiotics that a patient absorbs to counteract the oxidation induced by cancer and chemotherapy. The longest-lived populations consume large quantities of fermented foods teeming with life, unlike pasteurized products which, having undergone pressure and heat, are devoid of vitality.</p> <p>Applied to pruning, the principle remains the same. The vine can only heal on the cane of a one-year-old wood: in reality, it simply covers the wound using its tannins. On older pruned wood &ndash; two, three, or four years old &ndash; it is unable to close the wound, which remains gaping and vulnerable to attack. I therefore manage to constantly maintain the same pruning line and only cut on the wood from the previous year. This technique causes the plant to gradually lengthen and compartmentalize its reserves, giving the vine a sensation of growth, like a liana trying to reach the canopy.</p>