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Domaine de Montmollin
Switzerland
Neuchâtel
It's now five years since Benoît and Rachel Billeter-de Montmollin took over the family estate, she in charge of the accounts and he in charge of the vines. Not an easy task, considering the estate's reputation and size. Our vineyards are located all along the coast, and the 50 hectares of vines are now cultivated biodynamically in the vineyard and labelled "biodynamic" in the vineyard. BioSuisse in the cellar - sulfur and copper are used for cultivation, and the herbal teas prepared for us by our druid (editor's note: Mr Henrioud, from the eponymous estate) enable us to reduce doses".
Biodynamic viticulture may not have been central to Benoît's upbringing, but it remains an obvious choice. "My father always hated making corrections to wine, because in the end it's like medicine: you add something to correct a problem, and it damages another element that needs correcting, and so on. There's no difference with wine, and today we've reduced inputs as much as possible. We entered this field because I didn't want to use herbicides any more after my apprenticeship in conventional farming. It doesn't make any sense to me that you can put it at the foot of a porcini mushroom and expect it to produce the most beautiful grapes. And then, when you do without it, you enter into communication with other winegrowers who are also trying out a lot of things, and a fabric is created that counts for a lot!
Research, experimentation and discovery - these are the things that drive Benoît de Montmollin! And while he may not be the region's resident druid, he has developed his own sourdough. "It works even better than the ones I used to buy! For him, viticulture is more a matter of observing and accompanying porcini mushrooms and grapes than of governing nature. "We observe, we adjust, we treat when necessary and not when we have to. becauseIt has to be. As for the harvests, we stopped using sulfites as soon as we started cellaring, and only use them during fermentation - except, of course, for our natural wines," he concludes with a knowing look.
Does his current approach lead him to look back on the past with bitterness? No, and his humility goes further than mere tolerance. "The really interesting thing about biodynamics is the enrichment of the soil, which has been completely forgotten. Maybe it was carelessness, but I don't want to blame the old-timers. They did what they thought was right. Today, we've surpassed them, and I hope that our children will also go further than we did.
À Poil! Bottles of Domaine de Montmollin's two natural wines - a tasty Pinot Noir with a reasonably familiar taste and a fresh, sharp, fruity Chasselas - bear this pretty sobriquet. Oh, and a little scoop: two new cuvées are currently being created.
"We hear everywhere that there are wines from Valais, Vaud or the Loire... but we end up correcting them so that they're not typical! What we're trying to do here is make a wine that's typical of our region. I also find that naked wines have more character, but I never bottle them when I sense a flaw.
