La Maison Romane

La Maison Romane was founded by Oronce de Beler, who in 2005 quit his advertising job in Paris, moved to Burgundy and started wine school in Beaune. Without any family ties to the area or an extremely well-padded bank account, Burgundy is not the easiest place to settle down to make wine. But Oronce found a small cellar in the heart of Vosne-Romanée and chose the somewhat atypical route of establishing a company, while offering to plow the vineyards of other domains by horse in exchange for grapes he could vinify under his own name. In parallel, he created a company that manufactured specially designed plows for using with horses.

Much has happened since the beginning in 2005 as the négociant business has grown, and Oronce has built a reputation for producing unmanipulated and highly terroir-focused wines that are highly sought after to this day. The company that manufactures horse plowing equipment has been sold, Oronce no longer does vineyard work for other producers, and he has moved to a larger cellar in Nuits-Saint-Georges. He produces wines from purchased grapes from a wide variety of terroirs in Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits, all from farmers who share Oronce’s high standards of sustainable vineyard work.

In the cellar, Oronce uses spontaneous fermentation, relatively long but gentle macerations with 100% whole clusters, storage in used barrels (new barrels are not used at all) and bottling without prior fining or filtration. Sulphur is added only at the beginning of the fermentation and in such small amounts that it is practically without effect (typically 5 mg/litre), but Oronce considers it to have a homeopathic effect on the wine, nonetheless. The result is Burgundian wine in a bright, elegant and delicately perfumed style that is only achieved with whole cluster fermentation. La Maison Romane make unmistakably Burgundian wine with classic notes, but with a small element of untamed ferocity that suits the wines incredibly well.