2022 Château de Lavernette Vers Châne Pouilly-Fuissé Magnum

Château de Lavernette sits right where the Mâconnais meets Beaujolais, in the village of Leynes. Its history goes back over four centuries. The land once belonged to the monks of Tournus Abbey, and in 1596 Philibert Bernard de Lavernette bought the property. Vines, a winery and wine presses were already part of the estate. It has stayed in the same family ever since. In the early 20th century the Lavernette heiress married René de Boissieu, and the two family coats of arms still sit side by side on every label.

For much of the 20th century the family sold its grapes to the local cooperative. That changed in 1988, when Bertrand de Boissieu and his Dutch wife Anke restored the old winery and began making and bottling their own wines. They were among the first in the region to adopt a more natural, low-intervention approach to farming, which was a radical move at the time.

Today the estate is run by their son Xavier and his wife Kerrie, an American oenologist. The couple met while working in California’s Napa Valley. After returning to France, they began converting the vineyards to biodynamic farming in 2005, and the estate has been certified organic and biodynamic ever since. Their top Pouilly-Fuissé cuvée is named after an ancestor, Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, a 17th-century painter once nicknamed “the French Rembrandt”.