Domaine d'Henri

Tasting the parcels before they become a blend

Michel Laroche tastes and re-tastes from vineyard to winery, overseeing vinification as winemaker at Domaine d'Henri in Chablis, France, with the patience of someone returning to ground he knew as a teenager. Michel Laroche learned to be a winemaker on what became this estate, spending most summers there before his longer life in Chablis wines began in 1967. At Le Domaine d'Henri, the work is both executive and bench-side: he guides the cellar, meets clients, and holds the family's know-how close enough to test it glass by glass.

The lineage has weight here because it has names. Henri and Madeleine Laroche created the estate in September 1961, committing their lives to vines in the Chablisien terroir. The wider Laroche line reaches back to ancestors born in 1695, with Louis Laroche, born in 1781, recorded as the family's first vigneron. The domaine now carries Henri's name as a tribute rather than an ornament. Its annual harvest lunch in Fourchaume began in 1961, a family ritual tied to the founder and to the slope that still gives the house much of its voice.

Fourchaume kept in separate parcels

The cellar works in Chardonnay, the grape that defines Chablis, and the method keeps intervention low. Parcels are vinified separately, natural yeasts lead fermentation, and the house avoids adding sugar to raise alcohol, aiming for wines to reach 12° naturally. Gentle pressing and élevage serve freshness and mineral precision rather than overt oak. Laroche has phrased the idea with a line that is more cellar note than slogan: "As a beautiful woman, wine, just needs a minimum of make-up to be even more attractive!"

The numbers belong to the vines. Fourchaume Héritage comes from the domaine's oldest plot, planted in 1937, before modern clones. Fourchaume Vieilles Vignes is made from a plot planted in 1970. Another Fourchaume parcel was planted half in 1964 and half in 1999. In 2012, the family began a massal selection program using its oldest Fourchaume plants to preserve biological and genetic diversity. By 2019, the holding exceeded 22 hectares, with Petit Chablis, Chablis, Premier Cru Beauroy, and Premier Cru Fourchaume each kept in the map of the domaine rather than collapsed into one idea of place.

The cellar and the Kimmeridgian slope

The estate sits on the Route d'Auxerre, close to the vineyards rather than arranged around a formal public stage. The cellar, the vineyard, and the tasting room carry the rhythm of a small family-run Chablis house: quiet, rural, and centered on decisions that begin in clay-limestone soil. Kimmeridgian strata give the wines their chalky mineral line, while the continental climate, with cold winters and dry, warm summers, keeps Chardonnay's fresh aromas intact.

The atmosphere follows the work. Stainless steel protects the line of Chablis Saint Pierre; Premier Cru Fourchaume keeps a large share of its vinification in tank to preserve minerality, with the rest shaped for structure. The room does not need a designed drama when the subject is a slope, a press, and the daily discipline of tasting. When Laroche speaks of preserving the vineyard for future generations, the concrete object in front of him is Fourchaume Héritage, from vines planted in 1937.