maison leroy
Lalou Bize-Leroy
Auxey-duresses
Côte de beaune - Côte d’or - burgundy
Story…
Maison Leroy is the heart and soul of the Leroy family legacy, established in 1868 by François Leroy, a winemaker who had been selling wines he produced since around 1851. François’s son, Joseph, continued to enlarge the small negoçiant business throughout the late 1800’s and on into the early 1900s. Joseph was joined by his son, Henri, in 1919. Building off of his father & grandfather’s ground work Henri elevated the family name and holdings to a whole other level. Through a close friend, Edmond Gaudin de Villaine, Henri found himself in a unique position to become co-owner of Domaine Romanée-Conti. He purchased roughly half the shares of Romanée-Conti in 1942, a percentage that the Leroy family continues to hold today.
For forty years Henri devoted everything to Romanée-Conti, helping to develop the domaine to what it is today and solidifying the family name amongst the greatest in all of Burgundy and France for that matter. He also continued his family business at Maison Leroy during this time and in 1955 he was joined by his daughter Lalou Bize-Leroy. Lalou became president of the business in 1971 and from here the family business truly begins to flourish.
Although granted with access to an extensive list of amazing terroirs across Burgundy and name that helps facilitate even more access when wanted, Lalou herself is the essence of the quality that comes from her wines. She has, and continues, to devote her time and effort towards the pursuit of constantly becoming better and producing the absolute best wines each and every year from the best vineyards she can. Although she produces and bottles numerous Grand Cru & Premier Cru wines, it is in her Bourgogne labeled wines that you can grasp the true greatness of Lalou. These humble bottlings are the most complex and enjoyable in all of Burgundy and in many ways are far superior to a great majority of prestigious cru bottlings produced by the majority of producers.
During her time as head of the family business she not only took the quality of the wines to another level she also expanded the business considerably. Finding it more difficult through the years to find growers that were farming up to her standards she began purchasing her own to be used in the Maison wines. Then in 1988 she founded Domaine Leroy after purchasing two seperate estates; she now owns 21+ hectares of vines.
Farming & Philosophy…
The driving reason for Lalou to purchase her own vineyards was because the mass majority of vineyards were not farmed well enough for her. Upon acquiring her own land she immediately began implementing biodynamic farming techniques and since 1988 all of the vines are farmed to strict biodynamic principles.
She never replaces an entire vineyard, choosing to only replant individual vines that need replaced. This is done through massal selection from neighboring healthy vines. As you would expect all vineyard work is done by hand and she prefers to use lightweight all terrain four wheeled vehicles to do any of the more laborious tasks in the vineyard.
Overall the work in the cellar is quite similar across all her cuvées. Grapes are hand harvested into small baskets and then transferred to the winery in refrigerated trucks, where they are then sorted before going into large wooden barrels for fermentation. There is no de-stemming or crushing of the fruit to avoid oxidation in the early stages and to preserve the native yeasts. A long slow fermentation is preferred and the reds see a long maceration. The juice is moved through the cellar entirely by gravity flow, once the juice is pressed off the skins and stems it flows down to the first level where it stays until malolactic is finished. The juice is then drained off the lees down to the second level where it ages until bottled.
vineyards…
Although a negoçiant business, Lalou does own an extensive collection of vineyards throughout Burgundy. Most of which are located in Vosne-Romanée & Gevrey-Chambertin which are used primarily for her Domaine Leroy bottlings. She also owns, under her Domaine d’Auvenay estate, a fairly extensive collection of of vineyards in Auxey-Duresses, Meursault, & in Montrachet including small plots in Puligny, Chevalier, and Criots-Bâtard.
