Charles Lachaux

Charles Lachaux started his micro-business thanks to Aligoté. On several occasions, he had blindly tasted the Aligoté Sous Châtelet de d'Auvenay alongside the serious Premier and Grand Cru Chardonnay.

Sometimes he beat the other whites; sometimes he was at least in the same league, he was always up there.

His inspiration and role model was Madame Lalou Bize Leroy, the Arnoux family has Aligoté and used to bottle it, but they didn't pay attention to it and the grapes were sold to négociants.

Charles wanted to re-vinify those grapes, if it had been 2021 he probably would have made the Aligoté with the domain label. But in 2018, he was already going through many changes, despite how kind and supportive his parents were, an Aligoté de Domaine could have been the last straw.
So Charles started a micro-business to buy the domain's grapes. His father, Pascal, had also made négoce wines, the tanks were still in the domain, there was a separate space to vinify the négoce wine, logistically it would be easy.

Charles's acquaintances, who had recently inherited his parents' domains, were pouring their hearts and sweat into conscientious viticulture, sad to see that his grapes were going into the hands of much larger négociants, where they would be blended into large cuvées. When they found out that Charles had started a négoce, they offered him some, so instead of just the Aligoté, the debut of the Charles Lachaux label included five wines.

By the way, the label was designed by Charles's wife Louise who is a graphic designer, the rose is for the couple's eldest daughter, Rose.

In 2019, there were six wines; Three additional wines were made in 2020, but one of the 2019 sources was discarded. Having said that, Charles does not plan to expand the selection drastically, for 2020 we have eight cuvees available on the web.

With one exception, there are no notable differences in winemaking between Charles Lachaux and Arnoux-Lachaux wines.
The exception is aging, Charles Lachaux wines are bottled after just under a year, unlike 18 months for domain wines, this is one of the big differences.

Négoce wines are fruity, captured before their stay in the oak — vins de soif.
Of course, they are still Burgundy and can get old, but the goal is immediate pleasure.

All the grapes are harvested by the Lachaux team, all the wines, including the Aligoté, are pressed in a vertical press, the fermentations are carried out with yeasts at room temperature, there are no sulfur additions until bottling, and they are minimal.

The Aligoté is vinified and aged in old barrels for just under a year and is bottled without clarifying or filtering.
The reds are 100% whole bunch, the macerations stand out for their brevity.

In 2019, they oscillated between 9 and 12 days, in 2020, some lasted only 6 days, they also stand out for their lack of extraction.

There is a daily pumping over, the reds were aged in older barrels, with the exception of Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru les Boudots and Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Suchots, each with a new Stockinger barrel, or the 20% of the cuvées.

When we met Charles, we were pleasantly surprised, we were faced with a great talent, capable of increasing the already very high quality of the family Domaine, as well as creating tremendously personal and overwhelming business wines.

We are very proud to be able to offer Charles Lachaux's personal project in Spain.