Sylvain Pataille
I’m pleased to offer some of Sylvain Pataille’s top wines from both the 2020 and 2021 vintage. As someone that has been buying and cellaring these wines for the last 15 years in my own cellar, as I will these vintages, I can’t recommend them vany more highly.
“Sylvain Pataille and Bryan Thomas”
It’s hard to believe it has been almost 15 years since meeting Sylvain Pataille at his cellar in Marsannay. I remember being thoroughly impressed with his passion, attention to detail and commitment to his vines. He had already been certified organic (2008) at a time most were just coming around to the idea. Olivier Lamy, was someone influenced by his methods and he was consulting for some very important Domaines. Still does today, as I understand.
Sylvain grew up around wine, although his family didn’t own any vineyards. As a teenager he could be found after school in the cellar of another Marsannay vigneron, Jean Fournier.
He started his domaine in 1999 with 1 hectare of vines, and has since grown it to its present day size of 15 hectares. Most of the vines are located in Marsannay and he does have a passion for Aligote as well as Pinot Noir. As mentioned above he has been certified organic long before it was fashionable, and is also one of the leading minds in the biodynamic movement.
His approach to winemaking is one of minimal intervention. The vinification process is long and slow with the use of some whole clusters depending on the vintage. Only indigenous yeasts are used, with sulfur only being added at bottling. Between 15-30% new
barrels are used. Fairly standard elevage with barrel aging being approximately 15 months, although some cuvees could see almost 2 full years. He lets the wines tell him what they need as there is no set formula.
For as long as I can remember, there has been a rumblings that several of the Marsannay vineyards, Clos du Roy in particular, deserve to be elevated to Premier Cru. I don’t think there has been all that much advancement of this idea since I first heard about it, although if you are to use Sylvain’s wine as an example, there would be several premier crus in Marsannay today, as these wines rival some of the top premier crus in the Cote!
