Domaine Oudin

 

Quick Facts

  • Location: Chichée, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
  • Winemaker: Nathalie Oudin; her sister Isabelle runs the business side of the winery
  • Vineyard area: 10 hectares
  • Age of vines: 30 to 80 years old 
  • Main varieties: Chardonnay
  • Soils: Limestone; marl topsoil
  • Vineyard management: Certified Organic
  • Winemaking: Minimal Intervention

 

Fun Facts

  • The Oudin vineyards have one of the highest shell-limestone concentration in Chablis (which has some of the highest limestone concentration in the world). Nathalie and her family can find a fossilized shell within one hour of searching, even in the courtyard of their home. The oyster fossils are her favorite (more specifically, the ones from the Kimmeridgian stage of the Late Jurassic).
  • The Oudin sisters have families of their own: Isabelle has a young daughter and Nathalie has two sons, aged 13 and 15, who love to fish in the river that runs through Chablis. 
  • Two years ago, Nathalie decided to plant a quarter-hectare of Pinot Noir, top massal selections from Côte d’Or, for vin des copains: house wine to share with friends. Says Nathalie, “even though I’m born in Paris, I’m still a Burgundy woman!”

 

When Isabelle and Nathalie Oudin’s parents banished weedkillers from their four-hectare vineyard in 1985, their neighbors thought they’d gone crazy. “In the ‘80s and ‘90s chemicals were everywhere in France,” Nathalie explains, sitting in the courtyard of her village home. But her parents had a unique situation. They’d adopted the vines from Nathalie’s grandfather, a carpenter and weekend-winegrower who sold his grapes and had never bottled his own wine to sell. Without a brand to uphold, there was no generational pressure: “my parents were able to make wine the way they wanted to,” says Nathalie. “So they bought a press and a tractor, and instead of spraying, they plowed.”

Nathalie’s mother Christiane was born in 1947 in Chichée, the 300-person village just south of Chablis where her family lives now. With no opportunities to find work nearby, she moved to Paris; it was here that she met her husband, who managed twenty engineers at a motor manufacturing plant. Two months after Isabelle was born (Nathalie was two), Christiane had had enough of the city, and while her husband split his time to run the factory in Paris, she moved the family home to take over her father’s small plot. “The 1980s were the right time to come over,” says Nathalie, “because it was possible to plant new vineyards. Now everything is already planted, but for my mother, there were aunts and uncles with land to plant on.” In 1985 they planted six more hectares.

As they grew up, recalls Nathalie, she and her sister couldn’t wait to leave their little village: “No bar, no cinema, just one boulangerie!”. It was never a given that they would take over the domain; their parents, like the generation before them, were both supportive and laissez-faire. Nathalie went to school for biology, but was frustrated by the scale of it: “they wanted me to go smaller, and smaller, and smaller,” she says, “and I didn’t want to finish my life on one protein.” That realization coincided with her growing curiosity about wine (she’d begun to drink more of it), and as she explored the links between flavor, yeast and bacteria, plants and ecology, she felt she’d found her place. Graduating with a master’s in oenology, she apprenticed in Australia, Beaune and Bordeaux before returning to Chablis in 2007.   

It was 2012, Nathalie’s fifth year at the winery and the year her second child was born, that she realized she needed a helper. She called Isabelle, who was working for a nearby domain and had learned the ropes of running a business. Isabelle helped out part-time at first. “I asked her to work full-time, and she said maybe,” Nathalie laughs. “But in the end she joined me. When she told her other job she had to quit, they cried. She’s the best partner.” With Isabelle taking both vineyard management and the office work that Nathalie had been doing on nights and weekends, the two became equal owners. 

The Chardonnay vines that Nathalie and Isabelle inherited range from those planted by her parents 30 to 45 years ago, to her grandfather’s original plots that are now 80 years old (Cru Vaucoupins, one of the two Vaugiraut parcels, and several of the Chablis cuvée parcels). In the south of Chablis, the terroir is la crème de la crème: the highest concentration of limestone in a region with one of the world’s highest concentrations of limestone. The rocky soil is a treasure trove of fossils left over from Jurassic sea floors, dense with oysters and ammonites. It’s not an easy environment for the vines, exacerbated by ever-hotter and dryer years; just 30 to 40 centimeters of clay topsoil separate their roots from the bedrock. Nearly nothing else will grow here.  

During harvests, Isabelle drives their small tractor, hitched up to a gentle pruning machine that they’ve opted to use in lieu of hand-harvesting. There is an important reason behind the decision: the timing of a tractor harvest is quick and precise, allowing Nathalie greater control over when she picks. “When they’re ready, they’re ready,” she says; the grapes won’t wait for a harvest team, and in some years the harvest will pause for several days to allow the remaining fruit to reach perfect ripeness.

If there is a secret to these wines’ profundity besides the grapes themselves, it’s the extended time they spend aging on the lees. For Nathalie this practice broadens the palette of aromas and brings out more freshness in the wine; 2023, a vintage she found especially fresh, aged on the lees for nearly three years. Les Serres is the longest-aged cuvée, but all wines are otherwise made the same way, with the lightest touch possible. “What I learned studying winemaking, I’ve never done in my winery,” says Nathalie; “in Australia I was working in big wineries, pumping dry yeast through 200-meter tubes. But for me it’s simpler: if you have good grapes, you have good wine.” To pay maximum respect to the fruit that’s survived against all odds, she maintains a minimal-intervention cellar: indigenous yeasts, stainless steel tanks (no barrels), and not much else. Vintage variation is a sign of success. “I’ve got different grapes each year,” Nathalie says, “and I don’t want to erase that.”

 


Les Serres:— Back to the top

Oudin Les serres tech sheet

Age of Vines: 30 to 70 years

Yields: 60hl/ha

Pruning Method: Double Guyot

Soil: Clay and limestone with southern exposures

Varieties: Chardonnay (with some Grand Cru vines from Vaugiraut and Vaucoupins used. Les Serres is 1st cru fruit)

Vinification Method: Grapes are hand harvested and gently pressed. Only natural yeasts are used and the wine is fermented in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. The wine rests on lees in tank for a year or more before it is bottled. Minimal sulfites are added.

Tasting Note: Pale yellow in the glass with shimmering silver highlights. The nose is bright with citrus, brine and flakey limestone notes. The palate shows elegant citrus fruit backed by lovely limestone driven minerality. This is a crisp, elegant wine that is never austere.

Pairing: Works beautifully with shellfish, grilled river fish, sea scallops sautéed in butter, grilled shrimp, chicken dishes, hearty garden salads, grilled vegetables and creamy goat or sheep milk cheeses.


Vaugiraut 1er cru:— Back to the top

Oudin Vaugiraut tech sheet

Age of Vines: 55 years

Yields: 0.75 hectare of old vines Chardonnay 40hl

Pruning Method: Double Guyot

Soil: Super-stony clay and limestone marl with southern exposures

Varieties: Chardonnay

Vinification Method (2023): Grapes are hand harvested and gently pressed. Only natural yeasts are used and the wine is fermented in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. The wine rests on lees in tank for one year before it is bottled. Unfined, lightly filtered; minimal sulfites added at bottling.

Tasting Note: Nearly yellow in the glass with lovely scents of round citrus, beeswax and creamy minerality backed by limestone, sea coast minerality and supple inflections of blooming lemon trees. The palate is loaded with juicy lemon and silken melon flavors that are followed by pounded stones and succulent acidity. This wine is dynamic young and can age gracefully for a decade or more.

2023 vintage (winemaker’s note): Sunny, rich and generous, still with the same beautiful freshness.

Pairing: Works beautifully with shellfish, grilled river fish, sea scallops sautéed in butter, grilled shrimp, chicken dishes, hearty garden salads, grilled vegetables and creamy goat or sheep milk cheeses.


Chablis:— Back to the top

Oudin Chablis tech sheet

Pruning Method: Double Guyot

Soil and Vineyard: Limestone marl with southern exposures; a blend of fifteen different plots in the town of Chichée.

Age of vines: 45 years

Varieties: Chardonnay

Vinification Method: Grapes are hand harvested and gently pressed. Only natural yeasts are used and the wine is fermented in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. The wine rests on lees in tank for one year before it is bottled. Unfined, lightly filtered; minimal sulfites added at bottling.

2023 vintage (winemaker’s note): Sunny, rich and generous, still with the same beautiful freshness.


Vaucoupins 1er cru:— Back to the top

Vaucoupins 1er Cru tech sheet

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Pruning Method: Double Guyot

Soil: Limestone with southern exposures

Age of vines: 65 years

Yield: 45hl/ha

Varieties: Chardonnay

Vinification Method: Grapes are hand harvested and gently pressed. Only natural yeasts are used and the wine is fermented in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. The wine rests on lees in tank for a year or more before it is bottled. The wine is fined with bentonite and lightly filtered. Minimal sulfites are added.