Description
André-Jean (“A-J”) Morin is the eighth generation of Morin to tend the vine in Arbois, beginning with his ancestor Etienne in 1704. A-J obtained organic certification in 2016 and biodynamic certification in 2019, and his approach in the vineyards is rigorously labor-intensive: not only is harvest conducted by hand, but nearly all vineyard work is performed manually. A-J even de-stems his reds by hand, using an old local tool known as a crible (famously employed by Pierre Overnoy in Pupillin): a wooden plank with grape-sized holes over which the harvested bunches are rolled back and forth until the fruit falls through.
André-Jean’s approach in the cellar is adamantly non-interventionist: he never adds yeasts, never chaptalizes, never adds sulfur before malolactic fermentation is finished, never pumps the wines, never fines, never filters, and keeps sulfur additions between 10 and 20 milligrams per liter. Despite a relative absence of controls, however, A-J’s wines are unfailingly clean, precise, and expressive—a reflection of his exacting, fastidious working regimen.
Domaine de la Touraize owns a 1.95-hectare parcel of Trousseau planted in 1972 in the southwest-exposed Les Corvées vineyard, whose warmth-retaining soils of gravel over marl are particularly suited to the variety. The bunches are manually harvested and lightly crushed, and fermentation occurs during a three-week maceration with occasional pump-overs and no punch-downs. This delicate extraction allows the fruit to remain lithe and supple, while still showing more color, weight, and depth than the Ploussard, as one would expect from the variety. Raised for one year in a combination of 80% large foudres and 20% terracotta jar, “Les Corvées” is chiseled, driving, and concentrated, built around kinetic energy rather than excessive structure.
