Jean-Marc Vincent

Jean-Marc and his wife, Anne-Marie, began the modern incarnation of their Santenay-based estate in 1997, after wresting the family holdings from the French legal system following the death of Jean-Marc’s vigneron grandfather, André Bardollet-Bravard. The vineyards were in poor shape, and much of the 5+ hectares that his grandfather planted around 1950 was now under lease to other producers. Through hard work and dedication, they reclaimed autonomy over the full estate and began restoring the old vines with meticulous hand-management; clearly driven by the desire to achieve low yields of high-quality fruit and re-capture the historic glory of Santenay, a quest that defines the domaine to this day. 

Jean-Marc, originally schooled as a biologist, immediately took interest in the high-density planting experiments of his friend, Olivier Lamy. As early as 2000, the Vincents followed suit and used careful selection of their old-vine cuttings to plant their vineyards to 10,000-15,000 vines per hectare, whereas typical modern Burgundy vineyards are at less than 10,000/ha. They also adopted an uncompromising dedication to organic viticulture and soil health to ensure the vines could handle increased competition and earlier harvest dates.

All of this was very abnormal at the time, and it took many years to establish a proper regimen, one that Jean-Marc still loses sleep deliberating over. He and his peers in the camp of high-density planting, like Sylvain Pataille, can draw confidence from the knowledge that pre-Phylloxera Burgundy vineyards were planted to even higher densities (30,000/ha by some monastic records), and obviously did not use synthetic chemical treatments. In a way, these methods can be seen as a return to tradition, not a departure from it.