IT’S NOT easy to go out on a limb in a country like France where winemaking is steeped in tradition and age-old rules and regulations, but some are proving that it’s possible.

Olivier Leflaive’s family had been making wine in Burgundy since 1635, but in 1994 he left the family-run Domaine Leflaive to concentrate on his own business, Olivier Leflaive, that he had set up a decade earlier. Today, at the request of a major UK customer, Olivier Leflaive is even making a Rosé, something which would have been unthinkable in the past.

“For us, Rosé is not real wine,” Olivier’s daughter Julie said at the annual Brisbane Hilton Masterclass Weekend held recently. “At first we weren’t very happy [to make it], but now we are,” she said, declaring later in the session, “We try to be open-minded about the rest of the world.”

In another Masterclass session, Hervé Augustin, of the Ayala Champagne house, offered tastings of his company’s Brut Nature Zero Dosage. Ayala took a huge risk at Vinexpo in Bordeaux when it showed a Champagne in the zero dosage style ie. without added sugar. No Champagne house had released a non-vintage Champagne in this style before. The reaction was enormous, providing the impetus for Ayala to launch its Zero Dosage Champagne onto the market in 2005.

Julie Leflaive and Hervé Augustin were two of a cast of high-profile winemakers and wine commentators who presented tastings at the Masterclass Weekend held Brisbane’s Hilton Hotel.

Julie and her husband Jean Savarin joined Olivier Leflaive a year ago, Jean working directly with Olivier while Julie manages La Maison d'Olivier Leflaive, the 13-room boutique hotel her father established in the village of Puligny Montrachet.

“People in Burgundy have problems opening bottles for people, so my father decided to open a restaurant offering fourteen wines for lunch,” said Julie. “People wanted to stay so my father built a hotel. Every day at the hotel we have a two-hour workshop where the sommelier goes with the customers into the vineyards. They do some work in the soil. The Japanese love that. Afterwards, they go to the cellar to see how to make wine and to taste it.”

Olivier Leflaive produces around 75,000 cases of wine a year, about 87 per cent of it Chardonnay and 13 per cent Pinot Noir, the two appellation varieties of Burgundy. There are 60 whites and 20 reds in the portfolio, an incredible number for what is geographically a small winegrowing region, yet reflective of the diversity within the region.

There are four categories of wine produced in Burgundy—the generic Burgundy appellation which accounts for 55 per cent of production, Village which accounts for 34 per cent, Premier cru which accounts for 10 per cent, and Grand cru which accounts for 1.5 per cent. There might only be metres, spitting distance, between each of them, but the soils and terroir differ widely.

Burgundy accounts for only three per cent of French production and 0.5 per cent of world production, and when you consider that Grand cru accounts for only 1.5 per cent of this 0.5 per cent of world production, you get an idea of just how hard to come by it is.

“In Burgundy, there is no correlation between price and quality, only between offer and demand,” said Jean. Hail can be an issue. “You can’t control it. If there is hail, you lose the vintage and half the next vintage,” he said. Added Julie: “We’re not allowed to use anything to protect the vines.” They are, however, allowed to add sugar to compensate for a lack of sunshine. This is in contrast to Australia, where hail protection is allowed but adding sugar is not.

“We have an estate with 20 hectares of vineyards of our own,” said Jean. “The rest we buy from 135 growers. We try to have long-term contracts. More and more, we pick the grapes [ourselves].

“For [the growers], it’s a great deal because we pay the same price [as when the growers did the picking].

“For us, it’s also a great deal because we can pick when we want and press the grapes the way we want to.”

Julie says the wines are handmade and hand-picked. “We respect a lot of tradition even if we have technology. All the work with the grapes is really careful and traditional. My father gives some of his own character (in the wines) and we don’t want to change that.”

Jean said the philosophy of the company was to, “make the wine as we like the wine, not to please journalists or even the customer”.

“It’s very easy to make wine but not easy to make good wine every vintage,” he said.

One vintage that obliged with excellent conditions was 2005, dubbed the “vintage of the century” by many critics (not that there have been very many vintages this century).

Four 2005 wines were presented at the Brisbane Masterclass, Olivier Leflaive Meursault, Olivier Leflaive Puligny Montrachet, Olivier Leflaive Meursault Tillets and Olivier Leflaive Corton Charlemagne.

This last one and its 2006 sibling are among some of the most outstanding Burgundies—beautifully complex wines with citrus and truffle notes and a lovely long finish. They could easily be cellared for around ten years.

Completing the line-up were 2006 vintages of Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Les Setilles, Olivier Leflaive Chassagne Montrachet, Olivier Leflaive Meursault and Olivier Leflaive Puligny Montrachet.

For those who like to cellar their wines, both the Olivier Leflaive and the Ayala wines have great ageing potential.

When Ayala was purchased by the Bollinger family in 2005, there was some expectation that it might become a Bollinger clone, yet it has successfully managed to retain and build on its own identity.

Hervé Augustin, who was second in charge at Bollinger, was appointed chief executive officer and immediately set about re-designing the labels and introducing some new lines. As well as the Zero Dosage Brut Nature, Ayala also launched a Rosé with zero dosage, the first and still the only Champagne house to do so.

It is a variation on Ayala’s Rosé Majeur, tasted at the Masterclass along with the Brut Nature Zero Dosage, Brut Majeur, Blanc de Blancs, 1999 Cuvee P’erle d’Ayala and 1998 Millesime. Founded in 1860 by Edmond D’Ayala, the house of Ayala has capitalised on Australia’s growing demand for Champagne with the visit by Hervé Augustin and, earlier in the year, his export manager Raymond Ringeval.

“All these wines have tremendous ageing potential,” Ringeval said of the Ayala line-up presented on that occasion

“The problem is people don’t have the patience to leave them.” Who could blame them?