Céline Fontaine

The Climb

Since 2007, Céline Fontaine has held the dual charge of winemaker and manager of the family holdings at Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard. The role demands technical discipline and an exact sense of timing, but it also depends on continuity. Here, the job is not only to make wine; it is to carry a living inheritance through each vintage and keep its link to place legible in the bottle.

Today

She remains in that role, working through recent harvests with the practical calm of someone used to uneven weather and uneven yields. Speaking about the 2019 vintage, Fontaine said, "Our volumes were 30% down in 2019. It was a combination of factors; the frost upset the volumes in Morgeot and the heat was a problem for the hillside vines of La Romanée etcetera." The language is plain because the conditions were plain: frost, heat, slope, and the hard arithmetic of fruit. She added, "I think the whites powerful and concentrated in 2019 – my parents have been here since 1985 and they have never seen 14° in the villages wine before." The point is not surprise for its own sake, but the evidence of a season pushing familiar ground into new territory.

Signature

Céline's signature wines include 2019 Passetoutgrains, 2019 Bourgogne Pinot Noir, and Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru 'Les Verges' 2012. Together they show the span of the domaine’s work: from the more immediate and early-drinking to the more structured and site-specific, each bottle carrying a different register of the same place.

In Their Words “Our volumes were 30% down in 2019. It was a combination of factors; the frost upset the volumes in Morgeot and the heat was a problem for the hillside vines of La Romanée etcetera.” “I think the whites powerful and concentrated in 2019 – my parents have been here since 1985 and they have never seen 14° in the villages wine before.”

Recognition

Her public standing rests on the work itself: winemaker at Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard in Chassagne-Montrachet, France. In a region where lineage, land, and vigilance are inseparable, Céline Fontaine’s name is attached to a role that is visible because it is repeated, vintage after vintage, at a family domaine.