Jérôme Flous

Coming Up

Oenological training gives technical language to cellar judgment. At Université des Sciences – Bordeaux (1997), Jérôme Flous took on the discipline that underpins analysis, process control, and sensory assessment in wine. Internships at Château Guiraud and Château Smith Haut Lafitte then placed that training inside harvest conditions, where fruit reception, fermentation, and timing require decisions made against the pressure of a living vintage. Consulting and technical services for wineries at Michel Paetzold added another register: diagnosis, precision, and adaptation across different production contexts. The craft lesson is consistent, process detail is not decorative; it is one of the ways finesse is built. Burgundy became the long-form application of that background when Jérôme became Head Winemaker of Domaine Faiveley (since 2007), bringing together study, cellar exposure, technical service, and production decision-making inside a domaine system.

Where They Are Now

Production oversight at Domaine Faiveley runs from vine cultivation through bottling, and Jérôme Flous works at that junction as Technical Director of Vines & Wines. The specialty is Burgundy winemaking for refined, polished, collectible red and white wines from holdings across the Côte de Nuits to the Côte Chalonnaise, where site, season, extraction, and élevage must be read closely rather than handled by formula. The house style under his direction has been shaped toward softer tannins, clearer fruit expression, and wines described as balanced and fine. In practical terms, that means extraction is managed for texture rather than force, freshness is protected without thinning the wine, and structure is asked to support fruit rather than dominate it. The 2019 Pinot Noir handling shows the working method. Jérôme Flous chose a very fast vinification: only a few days of cold pre-fermentation, a very fast fermentation, small punch-downs, soft pumping-over at the end, and pressing as soon as fermentation was complete. For that vintage, he saw very soft vinification as necessary to preserve aromatic complexity and freshness. The point is vintage response: technique adjusted to the year, not repeated as habit. Vintage assessment and élevage sit in the same technical frame. On 2017, he said, "2017 was a renewal! It’s a nice vintage for volume, the frosted vines certainly compensated, we had to do some green harvesting to keep control, though still quite limited." He also said, "We prefer a long elevage, so February to April is expected for bottling the 1er and grands crus." Volume, frost, green harvesting, and bottling windows are not separate topics; they are linked stages in the same balance of crop, extraction, maturation, and release. Six key wines were selected to give an overview of the 2019 vintage: Corton « Clos des Cortons Faiveley » Grand Cru Monopole 2019, Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru 2019, Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru « Les Saint-Georges » 2019, Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru « Les Cazetiers » 2019, Clos-de-Vougeot Grand Cru 2019, and Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru « Champ Gain » 2019. As a set, they mark out red and white Burgundy, grand cru and premier cru, across sites where the making has to hold detail without flattening origin.

Career - Head Winemaker, Domaine Faiveley, Nuits-Saint-Georges (2007–present) - Intern, Château Guiraud - Intern, Château Smith Haut Lafitte - Worked