A family-owned domaine since 1779, La Meulière is today run by brothers Nicolas and Vincent Laroche. Vincent, born in 1976, graduated from the wine school in Beaune and replaced his father Claude as the person in charge of the estate’s vineyard management. Nicolas, class 1972, studied at the wine schools of Beaune and Montmorot (Jura) and joined the domaine in 1994. Since then, he has been running cellar operations for La Meuliere.
While the cellar is located in Fleys, a village 2 miles east of the town of Chablis, the property’s vineyard holding area covers a surface of 27 hectares. With the sole exception of the Petit Chablis plot, the soils across the entire acreage are characterized by Kimmeridgian calcareous marls, one of the most distinctive elements of the Chablis terroir. The domaine’s land is characterized by 40 distinct vineyard parcels, scattered along the right bank of the Serein river, across the villages of Beru, Chablis, Chichee, Fontenay, and Fleys. Some of these vineyards are among the finest in the region, such as the Premier Crus of Mont du Milieu, Mont de Tonnerre, Fourchaume, and Fourneuax. The average age of the vines is 35 years.
The vineyard operations, harvest included, are carried out manually to ensure the absence of crushing and bruising of the berries and thus to avoid oxidation of the musts. For this purpose, a rigorous sorting of the grapes is done in the vineyard. Great attention is dedicated to the employment of sustainable agricultural practices with to preserve biodiversity and the microbial life of the soil. The growth of cover crops is encouraged and human intervention is reduced to the minimum. The estate is certified in High Environmental Value level 3 - the highest level of environmental certification released by the French government.
In the cellar, Nicola’s main goal is to bring out the expression of each individual terroir. To do so, he avoids excessive handling of the juice and uses minimal doses of SO2. Upon arrival at the winery, the grapes are gently pressed. The juice then undergoes natural settling and racking before being transferred into temperature-controlled stainless steel vats, where the alcoholic fermentation and the malo-lactic fermentation take place naturally. Petit Chablis and some Chablis cuvees are bottled in the spring following the harvest. However, a majority of the wines, Premier Crus included, are aged for 12 months before bottling.
