Vitacee’s tiny cellar, off a side street right outside the ring road demarcating the “city center” of Beaune, could very well be smallest in the municipality, which would very likely put it on the short list of “Most Lilliputian Garagistes on Earth.” Quite a few of you reading this would, at least, feel the need to stoop, and it’s doubtful more than 4 people could fit in there at once, so we’d all have to take turns. With such a small space, there’s no way Vitacee could ever, truly, make enough wine, so it’s nice to see that the winemaker / owner / sole employee David Vérot isn’t even trying. He’s not trying to push against the hard limits, but rather is allowing them to inform what he does – he’s not biding his time to scale up, but instead he’s bottling a haiku. There’s no room for David to do everything, so the things he can do need to be very special indeed. As David tells us “ I don’t want to be big because if I’m not enjoying it, what is the point?”

David’s been making burgundy since 1998, starting at Bernard-Bonin in Meursault, before heading to Jean-Phillippe Fichet and, finally, from 2008 until quite recently he worked as the Maitre de Chai and second in command at Domaine des Croix, with a portfolio of responsibilities over nearly every aspect of production. In addition to making wine, David’s also been shaping the future of Beaune, teaching winemaking as a career at a local school. This goes a long way towards explaining his preternatural avuncularity and magnificent patience and also, his insatiable curiosity towards the terroirs that surround him.

Specifically, David’s curious about the Macconais, the southernmost part of Burgundy, and nearby Monthelie, where he sources organic fruit from “people I like working with.” These two terroirs, he tells us, he will always strive to bottle, as he finds they have much to say. David often collaborates on buying fruit with other mico-negociants of note, including Bastian Wolber of Laisse Tomber and Jonathan Purcell of Vin Noe. The fruit David gets he presses and often ferments at Domaine des Croix then ages the wines in his own space using old wooden barrels he can get down via the trapdoor that looks out onto the street. All David’s ferments are native, and he avoids sulfur usage until bottling, when a scant 15ppm is added, along with a gentle filtration to make sure the wine is pristine. That being said, he reserves the right to change things up in future vintages, should he feel other techniques show the terroir more clearly, telling us “people get accustomed to doing things the same way, even if they don’t need to.”