Paul Espitalié

The Climb

At Simonnet-Febvre in Chablis, France, the work since 2018 has been shaped by Paul Espitali in the dual capacity of director and winemaker. The emphasis is on control without bluntness: reading each parcel on its own terms, then keeping the house’s wines aligned to a single standard of precision. The added responsibility of director-general of Maison Simonnet-Febvre arrived in 2019. With that, the job widened from cellar decisions to the running of the house, but the underlying method stayed the same: continuity, restraint, and attention to how each part sits within the whole.

Today

Since 2018, Paul Espitali has directed winemaking at the house, and since 2019 he has also held the role of director-general of Maison Simonnet-Febvre. Those dates mark a steady consolidation of responsibility rather than a change of course. The work remains tied to Chablis and to a working principle he states plainly: preserve the purity, diversity, and complementarity of Chablis terroirs.

In Their Words “We're very happy with 2022 – 57 hl/ha – no VCI. There's lots of fruit and roundness just here and there there are places where the acidity is a bit low – it's heterogeneous!” “The idea, starting from simple winemaking, is to preserve the purity, diversity, and complementarity of Chablis terroirs.”

Recognition

His own language is specific to the trade: it measures a vintage by yield, VCI, fruit, roundness, acidity, and heterogeneity rather than by abstraction. In that sense, the 2022 remark reads as cellar talk, not copy — a direct assessment of variation inside the crop and the kind of candor that matters when wines are being assembled from differing material. The second statement names the governing idea more explicitly. Starting from simple winemaking, the aim is to preserve the purity, diversity, and complementarity of Chablis terroirs. That puts the emphasis on fidelity rather than intervention, and on making the different sites work together without flattening what makes each one distinct.