Meet Hubert Laferrère; owner, winemaker, viticulturist, sales manager, chief cook and bottle washer of Domaine St Denis. The man even makes his own machinery. It’s amazing.

Domaine St Denis Mâcon Lugny 2010

It quickly became apparent just what a smart cookie he is when we first met him as he proudly showed us the machinery he had adapted himself (he’s an agricultural engineer by training). He’s equally passionate about his land, which he painstakingly bought piece by piece over a period of about 20 years as he travelled the length and breadth of the Mâconnais analysing soils and tasting wines. Hubert Laferrère is a talented and conscientious winegrower as clearly demonstrated by the quality of his wines.

Hubert is evidently a scientific, thoughtful and methodical man; he understands his soils and his vines and deploys his rational engineering brain to devise the best ways of caring for them. He grows crops in between the vines to keep the weeds down, stop erosion and prevent the soil becoming impacted and then ploughs them back into the soil to provide nutrients for the vines. When it comes to winemaking, Hubert is more of an artiste. He chooses when to pick his grapes by tasting them and he has a great palate as you will be able to tell from the wine. Once the grapes are picked, he makes wine from each plot of land separately to preserve their unique character and then blends them at the end to create his particular cuvées. Anything he isn’t happy with is sold off to negociants.

Not many people these days are wholly responsible for the creation of a product from beginning to end; one can only imagine that his work is very satisfying indeed. Happily, we can confirm that drinking his Mâcon Lugny 2010 is a similarly satisfying experience.