Whatever your school was like — football? yearbook editor? trigonometry? — it was no doubt quite different than wine school in Beaune, Burgundy. There, the likes of David Croix, Mathilde Grivot, Amélie Berthaut and Armand... Read More

Whatever your school was like — football? yearbook editor? trigonometry? — it was no doubt quite different than wine school in Beaune, Burgundy. There, the likes of David Croix, Mathilde Grivot, Amélie Berthaut and Armand Heitz hung out drinking at Le Square and learning how to make wines. All of them are now on their way to becoming Burgundy’s new crop of stars.

Not everyone in that crowd ended up in Burgundy. Sometimes we forget how close Beaune is to Champagne, especially the Aube. If you grow up in the Aube, you actually live closer to Beaune than to Reims and many Aubois go to Beaune for schooling.

So it was that Aurélien Gerbais ended up in Beaune, palling around with many of Burgundy's future stars. He even worked at one of Burgundy's well-established stars, Olivier Lamy of St. Aubin. After that amazing hands-on experience he eventually made his way back to Champagne to join another group of visionaries, Aube stars like Cedric Bouchard, Vouette & Sorbée and Ulysse Collin. Even so, to this day he says, “I consider myself more Burgundian than Champenois.” That’s the Aube for you.

Gerbais’ family domaine is in the village of Celles-sur-Ource. The soils are Kimmeridgian, though there's a sector where the limestone-clay mix is nearly identical to what you find in the Côte d’Or. His family has farmed organically since the 1990s, but when Aurélien took over (this is recently; he’s still in his 20s) he brought Lamy’s obsessive farming home with him, elevating the domaine's game even further.