Domaine Des Barbatruks

Maxim Lannay started the domaine in 2017 and was joined by his wife Isabelle a year later. Maxim did not come from a family of winemakers. Coincidentally enough, he was once a young student of Ratapoil’s Raphaël Monnier, who was famously a longtime school teacher. He developed an interest in viticulture and began working at Domaine Villet, one of the forerunners of biodynamic agriculture in the  Jura. He then spent two years in the cellar of Alice Bouvot of the legendary Domaine de l’Octavin where he learned the finer points of viniculture. Isabelle Delahaye is a former sommelier who worked in some of France’s finest wine establishments, and she was introduced to Maxim by Alice Bouvot herself. Today, they work just around 1 ha of vines dotted around Arbois, Montigny-les-Arsures, Pupillin, and Montmarin. They grow savagnin, ploussard, seibel (a hybrid variety), pinot noir, and gamay. In 2020, they started a négociant range (simply called Les Barbatruks, after a French cartoon) in order to help invest money into new projects and provide for a better living that the fickle climatic conditions and small land surfaces of the Jura were not allowing. Grapes for the négociant cuvées are purchased from biodynamic growers in the Rhône Valley, the Languedoc, Alsace, and more.