Domaine Violot-Guillemard

In the early 1900s Joannès Faivre did a couple of very important things. Firstly, he set up his domaine, and, secondly, he married Léontine Badet. Together they had a daughter, Marie-Louise, who went to marry Louis Violot. Sadly, he died in an accident whilst working at the domaine. A few years later, she got remarried to Jules Guillemard, and hence took on the now familiar double barreled family name. They had two sons, Robert and Gilbert, who became winemakers. The latter had six children with his wife Madeleine, of whom Thierry was one.

Thierry joined the domaine in 1978 and spent the next 40 years building up the holdings, the clientele and the quality of the domaine. In 2015, his son, Joannès joined him before taking control in 2019.

Today, as it enters its latest phase of development, the domaine stands at 8 hectares, spread across a remarkable 28 appellations! You don’t have to be a genius to work out that that averages out at less than a third of a hectare per appellation, which means an awful lot of very small cuvées. Joannès is also embarking on a new cuverie just across the road from where the existing domaine is now. The future is very bright and very exciting.

The big change that Joannès has made is his move to extensive use of whole-bunch, although as he points out, his grandfather used to use 100% whole-bunch back in the day, so he’s only coming full circle, or maybe only a semi-circle for those wines with only 50% whole bunch! It will be fascinating to see the further progress he is likely to make with the new cuverie at his disposal, having already made quite a name for himself in a very short space of time operating out of his currently quite cramped surroundings.