Our producer: Domaine Claude Riffault

Like his brother Benoît, Stéphane Riffault trained at the Lycée Viticole in Beaune. The siblings wanted to take over their father's winery together. After Stéphane's successful graduation, he began a productive and intensive apprenticeship with Olivier Leflaive in Puligny-Montrachet and at Château Angelus. In 2001 Stéphane returned to Sury-en-Vaux. However, his brother has fallen in love with Gérard Boudot's daughter, Domaine Etienne Sauzet, and has even taken responsibility for the vines there.

Like many of his colleagues in Sancerrois, Stéphane concentrates very successfully on the locality of his wines. The time at Oliver Leflaive in particular shaped his quality thinking. In Burgundy, with its small and tiny plots, the winemakers have long specialized in carving out the individual locations. There is a lot of hard manual work behind it: Greening the rows of vines, green cuttings, careful soil cultivation and, if necessary, yield regulation by means of "vendange verte", in which excess shoots and buds are removed. A lot of manual work and attention to detail.

Claude Riffault's Domaine Riffault has always been known in the Sancerrois, so it is all the more impressive that his son Stéphane has improved both style and quality. Since Stéphane has been running the domaine, the quality of the wines has increased continuously. He himself says that it took him 10 years to understand every single parcel.