TWO MINUTES WITH | Guillaume Lavollée, Domaine Génot-Boulanger
Domaine Génot-Boulanger was established by a husband-and-wife team in Meursault in 1974. Today, it is still run by a husband and wife, in the form of fourth-generation Aude and her husband Guillaume, who took over the running of the estate in 2008. The couple own 22 hectares of prime vineyard across Burgundy, which they have converted to organic farming. Guillaume recently visited the London Club to host a tasting for Members, so we sat down with him beforehand for our quickfire Q&A…
What is your ‘last supper’ wine?
It would have to be from 1982, my birth year. Ever since I entered the wine world, I've felt a special resonance in tasting and sharing wines from the year I was born. They carry something personal that no other bottle can replicate. I would choose a 1982 Barolo from Bartolo Mascarello. A magnum, because I intend to live a long life, and the format demands patience, just as the wine does. I've actually had the privilege of drinking this wine before, in the US in 2018, with American sommeliers who shared my birth year. There was something extraordinary about that moment: a Burgundian, a Barolo, and a room full of people united by a single vintage. For my last supper, I'd want exactly that feeling again, but with the people who knew me before wine did.
Where is your dream vineyard?
I don't think in terms of regions, I think in terms of places. My dream vineyard would definitely be a clos, enclosed by ancient stone walls, wrapped around a château, where the boundary between park, garden and vineyard doesn't exist. A place where the aesthetic and the functional are completely integrated, where beauty and terroir are inseparable. My passion for heritage and historic architecture always pulls me in this direction. As for the soil, it would have to be limestone. My palate, my instincts, my identity, everything leads me back to limestone. I'm a child of the Yonne, after all – the calcaire is in my bones.
Who is your wine hero?
I meet heroes every day in this profession. It’s a demanding job, at the mercy of the climate, of irregular harvests, of an open-air atelier that never quite behaves as you'd like it to. But if I had to single out one person who has pushed me forward, perhaps without even realising it, it would be Stéphane Tissot in the Jura. His generosity in sharing his experiences taught me something fundamental: there are no small terroirs, only different ones.
I like people who share their knowledge, their experiences, and he was so open with me. He owns around 50 hectares, has 30-odd employees, makes around 50 different cuvées, and does a lot of experimentation with different ageing vessels, different grape varieties, with organics and biodynamics. That insight changed the way I approach Génot-Boulanger. It made me realise that there’s always some someone bigger than you that has a more difficult task. We work across 30 appellations, and it gave me the confidence to experiment, to explore – stem inclusion, low sulphur, ageing in ceramics – and the confidence to make mistakes. I carry that lesson with me every day.
What’s the next big thing in wine?
I believe the next revolution in our world will be technological. We are already running trials with autonomous tracked vehicles in our vineyards, and I am convinced that robotics and AI will take us further than we can currently imagine in understanding the health of the vine, mastering the vintage, and revealing what terroir is truly capable of. Crucially, this will also ease the physical burden on the men and women who do this work every day – but without removing the human essence of what we do. I find the prospect fascinating and, I admit, slightly daunting. But it is coming, and those who engage with it seriously will be better placed to make wines that are truer to their origins.
What’s your favourite wine memory?
The first always resonate the most. When I arrived at the domaine in 2008, my right-hand man, Nicolas Ludwig, who unlike me had formal wine training, wanted to show me something I had never tasted. One evening, he organised a dinner where every wine was served blind. The last white stopped me in my tracks. It had a depth, a length, a dimension I had never encountered before. It was a Chevalier-Montrachet 2006 from Domaine Niellon, a young wine, probably far from its peak. But the greatest terroirs reveal themselves even in youth, especially when the conditions are right: good company, the right dish, the right moment. That alchemy is unforgettable. Since then I have tasted older, rarer, more expensive wines. But that Chevalier-Montrachet remains the wine that first showed me what a truly great terroir can do. And that never leaves you.
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