Taking the lead in the vineyard and the cellar is Romain Chapuis, a progressive next-generation vigneron who crafts highly delectable Burgundies in both colours.

Romain has always loved wines and knew from a young age that he wanted to be a winemaker. In his younger days, he travelled extensively, in particular to Lebanon, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia, to learn to make wine. A few years later, Romain returned to Burgundy and came under the tutelage of natural wine superstar Philippe Pacalet, who himself was educated by his uncle Marcel Lapierre (one of the most revered Beaujolais producers) and Jules Chauvet (the founding father of the French natural wine movement).

After founding Chapuis Frères, Romain and Jean-Guillaume had just enough capital remaining for 0.8 hectares of vines. (This has grown slightly over the years whenever suitable plots have become available, but the opportunities have remained few and far in between. This is Burgundy, after all.) To augment and grow their portfolio, the Chapuis brothers rely on a network of like-minded growers who work organically. They select their sources with utmost care and attention to grape soundness, soil type and vine age.

Chapuis Frères encapsulates Romain’s ethos — organic viticulture and non-interventionist winemaking — which results in extremely pure and delectable Burgundy wines that transcend their appellations.

In the cellar, Romain favours gentle vinification methods and minimal intervention. This means direct pressing, vinification and ageing in barrels for the whites with next to no SO2 added (if at all), and whole-bunch maceration and fermentation for the reds, with a similarly homeopathic approach to sulphur addition. Use of new oak is very limited, and is driven more by the replacement of overly ancient barrels rather than any prescribed regime.

While he adores making charming wines high in drinkability quotient, Romain is intolerant of any kind of winemaking fault. In keeping to his exacting standards, he has been known to get rid of entire barrels of wine that had exhibited even the slightest hint of fault.

With their vibrant and non-conformist label designs, it may be convenient to put Chapuis’ wines into the ‘natural wine’ category. But when we taste them, we always feel his wines are beyond this categorisation. When asked how he feels about his wines being labeled as natural wines, Romain pondered for a while before replying, “Frankly, the only ‘definition’ I’m comfortable with is that I’m making honest wines. Every time I make a wine, I ask myself: Is this wine true to its origin? Is it pure? Is it something people will enjoy? I don’t like to be restricted by any dogma that stifles my conscience and prevents me from making a good wine. Yes, I want to intervene as little as possible, but more importantly, I want my wine to be right.”

As a born and bred Burgundian, despite his unwavering commitment to making pure wines, Romain remains staunchly respectful of appellation rules. This is why we don’t find a Vin de France from his cellar: each wine reflects its origin, in taste and in name.