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Tasting Emmanuel Giboulot’s Côtes de Beaune ‘La Combe d’Eve’ 2015 was a revelation and a decisive factor in importing Emmanuel’s wines.
In the 1970s, Emmanuel Giboulot’s father was an organic farmer just outside Beaune. His farm included 5 hectares of vines among other crops.
Although Emmanuel was more interested in becoming an actor, back in 1985 he set out on his own and cultivated vines on less than one hectare belonging to his father along with cereals.
With the pedigree of a farmer, Giboulot carried on working organically and over the next few years, he expanded his holdings, purchasing small plots in Beaune, Rully and Hautes-Côtes de Nuits. Always striving for improvements and ensuring the quality of his soils, he started to introduce biodynamic principles in his vineyards despite the scepticism of his neighbours, and he gained the biodynamic certification in 1996, at a time when many wine growers in Burgundy were farming conventionally, in a manner that was more aggressive for the eco-system.
Emmanuel Giboulot has very strong convictions about biodynamic farming and when, in 2014, he refused to spray his vines with an insecticide to protect against a deadly vine disease (flavescence dorée - spread by leaf hopper insects), the man in his early fifties was prosecuted and fined. Giboulot was not against the treatment, but he objected to the fact that it was an ‘obligatory treatment’, and he questioned the removal of ‘individual freedom’. He successfully appealed and his conviction was overturned.
Today he tends 10 hectares of vines scattered in Côte de Beaune and Hautes Côtes de Beaune, perhaps not the most well-known appellations. However, Emmanuel cares and protects his myriad of terroirs with a simple goal in mind: producing wines that are clean, pure, delicate and refined. And while the majority of his vineyards are rented, his priority is to maintain healthy soils.
The vinification practiced by Emmanuel Giboulot confirms his careful, passionate and fastidious labour in the vineyards. His cellar is simple, but fitted with modern technology, and he has not used new oak for more than a decade. His intervention is minimal so as to let each vintage, along with each appellation, express their own personality.
Emmanuel Giboulot has become a prominent figure as well as a vocal advocate for biodynamic wine growing in Burgundy. This pioneer of biodynamics produces wines of precision, clarity and integrity.
