interview

<p><strong>This interview with Michel Pernot took place in <glossary term="Puligny-Montrachet" title="840">Puligny-Montrachet</glossary> in July, 2012.</strong></p> <p><strong>Introduce us the domaine.</strong></p> <p>The <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary> is spread over 23&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> split between three children and my parents. My brother and I are the 5th or 6th generation to work this land, and my brother Paul&#39;s son, Philippe, has been working with us for a while as well. My great-great grandfather was a <glossary term="Négociant" title="729">n&eacute;gociant</glossary> here in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Puligny-Montrachet" title="840">Puligny</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and eventually purchased some vines. Other <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> were inherited through family, all of which culminated in Domaine Paul Pernot.<br /> <br /> <strong>How has it evolved since you and your brother took over?</strong><br /> <br /> Paul and I have been purchasing vines over the last 30 years. We made some great acquisitions 25 years ago; prices were a lot cheaper back then! We&#39;ve been lucky enough to purchase <glossary term="Grand Cru" title="501">Grand-Cru</glossary> sites three&nbsp;times in our careers, and have acquired <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Les Pucelles" title="835">Pucelles</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Folatières" title="456">Folati&egrave;res</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Santenay" title="915">Santenay</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Beaune" title="154">Beaune</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Volnay" title="1118">Volnay</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Pommard" title="814">Pommard</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> as well as a good amount of Puligny-Village over the years. We&#39;ve also planted some regional&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Appellation" title="113">appellations</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> including Bourgogne <glossary term="Chardonnay" title="271">Chardonnay</glossary> and Bourgogne&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Pinot Noir" title="805">Pinot Noir</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> It&#39;s crazy; 20 years ago, we could only sell (generic) Bourgogne wines to brokers, and we&#39;d see almost no financial return. Nowadays, we don&#39;t have a single bottle left at the end of the season.<br /> <br /> <strong>How old are the vines?</strong><br /> <br /> It varies a lot, but everything that is <glossary term="Premier Cru" title="824">1er-Cru</glossary> and <glossary term="Grand Cru" title="501">Grand-Cru</glossary> are very old. These are vines that my father planted back in 57, 58, 59, 60 and 61. They are in good shape, and we won&#39;t be ripping them out. In 20 years, I&#39;m sure these vines will still be there: they aren&#39;t sick, they aren&#39;t degenerating. And back then <glossary term="Clones" title="304">clones</glossary> didn&#39;t exist, so everything is of course in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Selection Massale" title="941">selection massale</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The regional <glossary term="Appellation" title="113">appellations</glossary> are a bit more recent, and are about 30-35 years old. The youngest are 20. Overall, the vines are aging, and aging well!&nbsp;<br /> <br /> <strong>What&#39;s the work in the vines like?&nbsp;</strong><br /> <br /> We&#39;re letting more and more grass grow free, except in certain <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> where we cut and burn the grass rather than using&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Herbicide" title="526">herbicides</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The vines are worked by a great team of guys, most who have been here 20-25 years.<br /> <br /> <strong>What about in the cellar?</strong><br /> <br /> 24 hours after performing a&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Pneumatic Press" title="811">pneumatic press</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> we do a&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Débourbage" title="379">d&eacute;bourbage</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> then <glossary term="Racking/Soutirage" title="843">rack</glossary> the juice into&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Barrel" title="142">barrels</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> where it&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Fermentation" title="441">ferments</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> After <glossary term="Alcoholic Fermentation" title="87">alcoholic</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Malolactic Fermentation" title="622">malolactic fermentation</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> we <glossary term="Racking/Soutirage" title="843">rack</glossary> the wines again, <glossary term="Fining" title="449">fine</glossary> the wines, then <glossary term="Filtration" title="447">filter</glossary> them lightly right before&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottling</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>&nbsp;<br /> <br /> The reds are more or less the same process. We <glossary term="De-stemming" title="378">de-stem</glossary> the grapes, then do a short <glossary term="Maceration" title="610">maceration</glossary> of only 10 days in <glossary term="Concrete" title="325">concrete</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vat/Tank" title="1140">tanks</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We almost never <glossary term="Filtration" title="447">filter</glossary> them. Everything is <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottled</glossary> early in the summer, because we don&#39;t have a <glossary term="Temperature Control" title="1018">temperature controlled</glossary> <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> and feel the wines would suffer if we let them hang around in there in those hotter months.</p>

article

<p>There&#39;s always a lot of debate about whether a wine reflects a <glossary title="1026">terroir</glossary> or the intervention of the winemaker. I&#39;ve been too busy watching the Tour de France the past three weeks to participate in any of these debates. It was a great Tour, a superb Tour, and I will long remember the hard, hot days in the Alps and Pyrenees.<br /> <br /> Getting back to wine: the only way to understand the personality of a wine is to get to know the personality who made the wine.<br /> <br /> This is a lot of work and requires an investment of time, money and energy. Language skills are also required.<br /> <br /> I drank a bottle of Paul Pernot <glossary title="840">Puligny-Montrachet</glossary> <glossary title="456">Folati&egrave;res</glossary> 1986 for lunch yesterday. With a delicious <glossary title="274">Charolais</glossary> veal roast bought from M. Bataillard of Az&eacute;.<br /> <br /> Paul Pernot has a reputation in Puligny as being a savage who talks to no one and who wants no one to talk to him. He is in his late 60s, looks very much like a peasant who has spent enormous time in sun-drenched vineyards and remains an aloof recluse in his native village. He is also an important landowner, with the largest plot of <glossary title="456">Folati&egrave;res</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="1152">1er Cru</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and has a formidable collection of motorcycles (he likes to ride Harleys) and antique Mercedes. He looks like an agrarian worker, but in truth he is a rather wealthy peasant.<br /> <br /> We&#39;ve been selling his wines for quite a number of years now. It took us about a year to get an appointment -- at the time he was heavily lauded by The Wine Advocate and simply was not interested. My wife would call and Pernot would refuse an appointment. More or less, he would hang up on her. Finally, Denyse (my wife) called and got Pernot&#39;s wife, who was perfectly polite and gave us an appointment.<br /> <br /> We arrived, Pernot told us he was busy and only had five minutes, and somehow we managed to hit it off with the guy and he agreed to sell us wine. Pernot was extremely reserved during this encounter, but we walked away with a decent feeling about the guy.<br /> <br /> About a year later (maybe in 1991), we came with a New Jersey retailer, the retailer&#39;s wife, and our daughter (who was about three years old). Pernot has a grandaughter the same age as our daughter. Our daughter got bored and had a fit on the floor of Pernot&#39;s <glossary title="254">cellar</glossary> as we were tasting the latest <glossary title="1109">vintage</glossary> of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="214">B&acirc;tard</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Quite literaly, she rolled on the floor screaming and crying and demanding that we leave immediately. In perfect French though.<br /> <br /> The retailer and his wife were horrified. They had been all nervous to go taste with the mythic Paul Pernot (he was getting 95s in <glossary title="865">Parker</glossary>) and to be tasting a range of grandiose <glossary title="212">Burgundy</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="113">appellations</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Afterward, they told us that they had been horribly embarassed by our daughter&#39;s behavior in the middle of serious d&eacute;gustation. Pernot smiled as we left and told us to come back at the end of August to taste the <glossary title="1109">vintage</glossary> after it was bottled.<br /> <br /> Since then, Pernot always asks us about our daughter and discusses Alyce&#39;s fit in his <glossary title="254">cellar</glossary> with great fondness. When we visit him, we invariably leave with gifts of old <glossary title="1109">vintages</glossary> to drink at our home in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="1205">M&acirc;connais</glossary><span>.</span></span></span><br /> <br /> As years go by, Pernot turns out not only to be friendly with us, but almost gushingly so. The man banters and tells small jokes as we taste, discussing old&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="1109">vintages</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> Puligny in the old days, and how <glossary title="">Burgundy</glossary> has changed over the decades. We discuss our children, his grandchildren and the future of the wine market. He gives us samples from other <glossary title="1089">vignerons</glossary> he has met, including a bottle several years ago of Bois de Boursan&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="277">Ch&acirc;teaneuf-du-P&acirc;pe</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> a bottle that turned into a phone call to the proprietor, that turned into a visit, that turned into a commercial relationship. Jean-Paul Versino who makes this delicious <glossary title="277">Ch&acirc;teauneuf</glossary> aways tells us that Paul Pernot is his image of a&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="1089">vigneron</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Versino likes to visit Pernot and often goes up to Puligny with a Belgian customer he shares with Pernot. For Versino, as for Denyse and I, the visits to Paul Pernot are immensely enjoyable, personal and gratifying.<br /> <br /> The 1986 <glossary title="456">Folati&egrave;res</glossary> I drank today was incredibly fresh, forward, honeyed, rich and with a touch of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="181">botrytis</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> What an example of <glossary title="">Chardonnay</glossary> from a grand&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary title="">terroir</glossary><span>!</span></span></span> Seventeen years since it was harvested, it was almost painfully expressive and demonstrative. We truly regretted coming to the end of the bottle.</p>