Corentin Houillon is another of the superstar Houillon clan (nephew to Emmanuel, Adeline and Aurelien, though only 7 and 15 years younger than Aurelien and Manu respectively). These wines are very much in the style of his family, fresh and alive, but with a glacial Savoyard edge and also speaking to Corentin’s technical proficiency having worked widely in top natural and conventional wineries. We think Corentin’s is one of the most exciting domaines to have emerged in the last few years and are excited to offer them in Australia.
Corentin is part of the very large and close-knit Houillon family leading to his childhood being spent working with Pierre Overnoy and his uncles and aunts, Pierre and the Houillon family being inextricably linked first through friendship and then eventually work, as the whole clan became the de-facto labour force of the domaine since the late ’80s. As such he trod his first Poulsard grapes in 1991 at age 1, and spent his childhood and teen summers working in the vines, the winery and tasting at the table with Pierre. More than a mere claim to fame this goes a long way to explaining the foundation of Corentin’s relationship to wine and his specific expertise of making zero-additive wines in eastern France. This background was ever present as he went to study Oenolgy and became the ‘rebel student’, questioning the prevailing notion that wine quickly becomes vinegar without sufficient and routine sulfur additions and acid corrections.
Post-study Corentin went to work with Domenique Derain in Burgundy, whom he credits with teaching him to understand Pinot Noir and how to work at a high level with the notoriously difficult variety, which he now farms himself in Savoie. Then he returned to the Jura but instead of Pierre, he went to work with Stephane Tissot, another godfather of the region albeit from a different, though no less impressive angle. Tissot is a very large and professional operation, credited with raising the esteem of the Jura to rival the Cote D’Or. Stephane’s management style is very inclusive and those who work for him are worked hard but consulted on every level from vineyard work to tasting barrels and cellar decisions, giving Corentin a 360 view of the practice of making fine wine. From here he came to Australia to work in a completely different context, landing at the Yarra Valley’s Hoddles Creek Estate, a world away literally and figuratively from his wine roots. To his credit, Corentin is open-minded in his pursuits and sought to broaden his horizons and expertise by working on the other side of the world and the industry, familiarising himself with the daily practices of conventional winemaking and learning the parameters of the science and craft.
For his own domaine, he searched no less than 12 regions to find the right mix of grapes and terroir, which he eventually found at Domaine de Verronet in 2019, a vineyard and cellar surrounded by forest between two mountains on steep slopes of glacial soils in the Savioe. These ‘Molasse’ soils, a mix of sandstone and quartz tied together with jurassic limestone, are crucial to the sense of smoky, saltiness in the whites and a complex alpine quality in the reds, tied together with a driving acidity. Corentin farms Altesse, Jacquere, Pinot Noir, Mondeuse and Gamay on these slopes. The grapes are vinified in an ancient cellar at the foot of the slope. In the cellar wines are pneumatic pressed, fermented in concrete vats and barrels, and aged in a mix of barrique and demi-muid, bottled under vacuum seal with no so2.
In the vineyard Corentin is certified organic (AB) and uses 500 and 508 biodynamic preparations. He does vineyard work by hand, according to lunar cycles where possible but primarily focused on practical agronomy, doing what’s needed at any given moment depending on the forecast and the season. He does not till the soil but prefers to keep a grass cover in the mid rows, which he mows, and then sows a cover undervine.
These are exceptional mountain wines, with the glacial setting palpable in the shape and tension, Coretin’s winemaking is fastidious and so well judged that his output to date and certainly in this release puts him firmly in line with some of the famous bottles of his family, a Jura boy in the Savoie.
