Champagne Alsace Loire Valley Burgundy Rhône Provence Languedoc Roussillon Southwest Bordeaux

france: burgundy

Domaine Elise Villiers, Vézelay

Elise Villiers was born and raised in Précy Le Moult, a village in the commune of Vézelay, which in turn is located in Burgundy’s Yonne Department and lies due south of the town of Chablis. Her tiny winery is now located in that same village. Historically, the Yonne had a flourishing viticulture all the way up until the latter half of the 19th century. Then the railroad to the Midi opened the Paris market to cheap southern wine, followed by the appearance of powdery mildew from America, followed by phylloxera. The three together dealt a severe blow to the vinous fortunes of the Yonne. It only began to bounce back in the late 1960s, led by the appellation of Chablis.

As a young girl, Elise was introduced to wine by an uncle, a wine merchant who would come to holiday dinners bearing bottles of prestigious appellations. When her own children began to come of age, she started to seriously consider a career of a vigneronne. In 1989, an elderly couple who were among the pioneers in the rejuvenation of Vézelay’s viticulture put their parcels, located on the eastern flank of the Vézalay hillside, up for sale (that flank is depicted on Elise’s label, and her parcels are on the right hand side of that broad vineyard). Elise offered to purchase them on the condition that the couple guide her in the vines for the first couple of years, which they were all too happy to do.

Subsequently, at age 30 she attended the viticultural school in Beaune (where Jean-Pierre Charlot of Domaine Voillot taught), and then went on to get a degree in enology from the Institute of Vine and Wine in Dijon. Today her domaine consists of four hectares (10 acres) of vines—three in Chardonnay and one in Pinot Noir—on either side of the Cure River Valley (Vézelay’s eastern flank makes up one side of this little valley). She hires a man to do the tractor work of spraying, plowing the soil, and hedging the vines. In the vines, with the help of a young woman, Elise does the pruning and training, and alone makes the wine and handles its élevage, and of course manages the sales. Part of her vines are currently farmed organically and her aim is to farm them all that way once she is confident that this is viable to do so in her rather wet region.

The appellation of Bourgogne Vézelay was created in 1997. In 2012, signaling its growing recognition, the appellation name changed to simply Vézelay.

The Wines

La Chevalière: Elise planted this vineyard in 1990 on the right bank of the Cure River, opposite Vézelay and its hillside. She has 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres) of Chardonnay here in relatively heavy clay-limestone soil, and she makes the wine in tank. This is a finely focused wine that emphasizes fruit.

Le Clos: Her Chardonnay here comes from 1.2 hectares (about 3 acres) planted in 1976 on the impressive and steep east-facing flank of Vézelay, where vines were historically planted only to be abandoned for nearly a century until the 1970s (the print of Vézelay on this page shows nothing but vines on all the visible flanks, and that print was made in 1610). One third of this is aged in new and old demi-muid barrels, and it is a particularly mineral wine with great elegance and understated power— a lot like the woman who makes it.