Famille Paquet Pouilly-Fuissé 2019
(Burgundy, France)

In 2016 Camille and Mathieu Paquet took over their family's estate located in the village of Davayé, which at the time was called Domaine des Valanges. Davayé is within the appellation of Saint-Veran in the Macon, and much of the winery’s holdings are inside this appellation as well. Formerly, Domaine des Valanges was producing typical Macon wines, that is to say, big volume wines at a low price. They were solid but nothing noteworthy and mostly destined for volume distribution. The Paquet brothers really wanted to do something of quality and not just continue to make "grocery store wine," if you will, so they started by changing the name to Famille Paquet and, over the years, have steadily been making improvements and investments. They converted to Organic farming and have since converted to Biodynamics and will be certified in 2023. They constructed a state-of-the-art new winery in which they were able to vinify the 2022 vintage. This allowed them to move out of their literal garage, giving them much more space. There is no more pumping as the grapes and wines are now moved solely by gravity, and the extra space means longer elevage times and investment in more tanks and barrels. In the garage, they had to bottle earlier because they had no room so the maximum ageing time was a year. Now for many of the cuvees, you will see 12-18 months before bottling, resulting in more complex wines. Lastly, they changed their vine training to effectively reduce yields by almost half. Previously they were farming like most in the Macon and averaged around 75 hl/ha, whereas now they aim for 45 hl/ha in a good year. All of these investments and improvements have resulted in wines that are several steps up in quality from the early vintages. These are now serious white burgundies, and Famille Paquet is positioning itself among the first tier of producers in the Macon region.