In 1996 Olivier Lamy makes his first complete vintage at the family-run Domaine Hubert Lamy winery in the tiny community of St-Aubin in a side valley of the Cote de Beaune, west of the famous villages of Chassagne and Puligny Montrachet.
Olivier's ancestors have been producing wine in St-Aubin since 1640, but Domaine Hubert Lamy was only founded in 1973. Of the estate's 185 acres, most of the vineyards are in St-Aubin, with smaller properties in the Puligny-Montrachet communities. Chassagne-Montrachet and Santenay
There are many reasons why Olivier Lamy is today among the top wine talents in Burgundy. His involvement with the family winery was identified with tremendous changes in the cultivation of the vineyards. Among his first moves was to change the composition of the vineyards from Pinot Noir to Chardonnay. Chardonnay currently covers 80% of the estate. Also, there is no doubt that he managed to put St-Aubin on a parallel trajectory, both in terms of quality and recognition, with the top designations of Burgundy.
His experiments in the vineyards are unstoppable but he is rightly considered the "king" of high planting densities. Pieces of land, such as St Aubin's stunning 1st cruiser, the Derriere Chez Edouard, reach 3,000 acres! He is also the first to adopt in the area the vineyard shaping system known as Guyot Poussard, breaking the trunk into two short arms and lifting the rods upwards instead of the horizontal axis. Thus the stump has more permanent wood, better resistance to difficult conditions and better and uniform circulation of the juice.
Often, in combination with the above techniques, he prefers not to "trim" his vines at all during the growing season. The work required in the vineyard is unthinkable but the result in Lamy wines is shocking: very low acreage yields, amazing ripening and better levels of acidity in the grapes. The quality is amazing especially if one considers that St-Aubin was an area that used to find it difficult to fully ripen its grapes. The cultivation is done with organic methods, but without certification of the vineyards.
At the winery the approach is as simple as possible. The whites are fermented in 300 and 600 liter barrels (demi muids) and the influence in a new barrel is decreasing more and more. There are years when there may be little or no new barrel in wines. In red it usually does not use bunches, unless it is very hot years, and the fermentation takes place in concrete tanks while maturing follows for 12-24 months depending on the vineyard and the year. Sharp precision in expression, linearity, energy, nerve, finesse and aging capabilities of Lamy wines are proof of genius of talent.
