Domaine Jean Claude Rateau, Jean Claude Rateau
" Jean-Claude Rateau is an astonishing person. With great discretion, he enchants us with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir of total authenticity and incomparable finesse, produced biodynamically since 1979.
I had been looking for years for a Burgundy producer with reasonable prices and fine, elegant wines capable of aging admirably. It is now done with Jean-Claude Rateau. Believe it or not, but Jean-Claude Rateau is the first producer in France to have worked in biodynamics since 1979. He is therefore one of the great precursors of this movement. At the time of this choice, Jean-Claude Rateau had only one motivation: to express the originality of his terroirs thanks to a living soil. He started with the 1.5 Ha in Beaune which belonged to his family. In 1980, he was the first to seek advice from the now famous Claude Bourguignon who carried out his first soil analysis at Jean-Claude's!
Jean-Claude says: "at home, the soils were alive. Next to them, the vines were completely weeded, you had to use the crowbar to make holes in the ground ... a real contrast with my soils. Jean-Claude Rateau now owns 10 hectares of biodynamic vines, spread over twenty plots around Beaune. He works like a goldsmith by adapting all of his treatments to the specificity of each terroir.
His wines are distinguished above all by their finesse and their total perfection. There is no false taste, no false note; everything is optimal purity. The noses are beautifully crafted with aromas of great freshness and great precision. The reds are bright (as Jean-Claude likes to point out himself), sparkling, probably because no detail is overlooked and the wines are not "over-extracted". Here it is really the magical "morello cherry-raspberry" side characteristic of the great Pinot Noir that dominates. The wines are always bottled without fining or filtration and taking into account the Moon and atmospheric pressures. "
