Didier fornerol
Didier Fornerol
Corgoloin
côte de Nuits - burgundy
story…
Didier Fornerol learned winemaking from his father at their family estate where he eventually took over the reins of in 1999. Prior to taking over he spent time at Domaine de L’Arlot as the vineyard manager and cellar master from 1982 to 1998, where he spent the majority of his time working alongside one of the great legends of Burgundy, Jean-Pierre de Smet. Much of what Didier has brought to his family domaine stems from his time spent with Jean-Pierre at L’Arlot.
Didier now works 6 hectares of vineyards in the Village of Corgoloin around his families historic estate. A majority of his vines fall under Côtes de Nuits Villages along with small amounts of Passetoutgrain, Aligoté, and Bourgogne. His production break down falls roughly to 60% red to 40% white wines.
After retiring from his own estate in 2007, Jean-Pierre de Smet joined Didier at his domaine and has worked closely with him in the cellar as part of his winemaking team. This move has all but cemented the correlation between the legendary bottlings that de Smet produced at L’Arlot and the incredible bottlings that are coming from Didier’s own estate.
farming & Philosophy…
All 6 hectares of Didier’s vineyards are farmed lutte raisonnée with very minimal amounts of synthetic treatments, if any at all. Didier is immensely passionate about the care of his vineyards, he personally, along with his small team, carries out all the vineyards tasks including: pruning, any treatments, trellising and hand harvesting the fruit.
Didier’s philosophy in the cellar is pretty straight forward for both his white and red production. All of his white wines are settled in tank for 12-48 hours, followed by native fermentations at low temperatures for 3 months. All of his whites are then aged in barrel with varying amounts of new wood dependant on the cuvée, the wines are racked once and then lightly filtered prior to bottlings.
It comes as no surprise that Didier is a firm believer in whole cluster wines, much like his mentor Jean-Pierre de Smet, and he also happens to be incredibly gifted practitioner of whole cluster production. All of his red production is done without any destemming, and the fermenting juice receives regular gentle manual push downs along with an occasional pump over. His entire red line up is aged for 14-16 months in barrel, with roughly 10% new wood, and they aging wines are racked no more than twice during the elevage. If deemed necessary the reds are fined with egg whites.
Vineyards…
Of the 6 hectares of vineyards Didier owns, more than half of it falls under Côtes de Nuits-Villages, most of which is planted to Pinot Noir. He has roughly about 1 hectare of Chardonnay vines in total across Côtes de Nuits & some Bourgogne Blanc, 40 acres of Aligoté, 35 acres dedicated to his Passetoutgrain bottling, & just under a hectare of vines in Hautes-Côtes de Nuits.
Côtes de Nuits Village
La Rue des Foins
This is not a single site, but the bottling of two small parcels that had been consistently singled out by both Didier and Jean-Pierre as being of higher quality. They therefore decided to start vinifying and bottling the fruit from these to parcels separately under its own cuvée name. The two parcels amount to about .50 hectares of vines that are located between the villages of Corgoloin & Comblanchien.
