Sextant e Domain Derain - Vino Naturale della Borgogna

The single biggest question newcomers ask is simple. What actually separates a Domaine Derain wine from a Sextant one? The answer comes down to where the grapes are grown.

Domaine Derain is an estate, or in French a domaine, which means the wine is made only from vineyards the family owns and farms. Every vine is tended by Julien and Carole, from pruning through to harvest, so these bottles are the direct voice of specific plots they nurture year-round. They are the more serious, ageworthy, terroir-focused wines, and they carry the higher price tags to match the rarity of that hand-farmed fruit.

Sextant takes a different route. It is a négociant label, so instead of growing all the fruit, Julien buys grapes from other farmers he trusts, always people working the soil cleanly, without chemical sprays. He then makes the wine himself, exactly as he makes the estate cuvées, so the character and the natural, hands-off style carry straight across. What changes is the economics. Bought grapes cost far less than owning prime Burgundian land, and that saving flows through to the shelf.

The upshot is a neat split. Sextant is usually the more affordable, more experimental of the two, home to easy-glugging reds, skin-contact whites, and pét-nats. Domaine Derain is the deeper, pricier, more collectable side. Neither is better, they are simply two different tools. If you are dipping a toe in, start with a Sextant. If you want to taste the family's own soil, reach for a Derain.

What unites both labels is a way of working that still counts as radical in Burgundy. This is properly low-intervention wine. The vines are farmed without weedkillers or synthetic sprays, the grapes are picked by hand, and fermentation happens with the wild yeasts that live on the fruit and in the cellar, never packaged commercial ones. Nothing is added to fatten or correct the wine along the way.

The clearest expression of that is their handling of sulphur. Most wine, even much that calls itself natural, gets a protective dose of sulphites at bottling. Julien pushes the other way, keeping additions tiny and, in plenty of cuvées, dropping them entirely for a wine with nothing added and nothing taken away. It is a high-wire act that demands immaculate fruit and a careful cellar, and it gives wines a freshness and energy that a heavier hand would smother.

They are not alone in this pursuit. A cluster of like-minded growers, several sharing a cellar in nearby Auxey-Duresses, is chasing the same honesty. The Californian Jon Purcell bottles tender, unhurried wines as Vin Noé. Bastian Wolber, working partly under the Laisse Tomber name, turns cleanly farmed fruit into taut, mineral Chardonnay and Pinot. Morgane Seuillot and Christian Knott make bright, expressive bottles at Domaine Dandelion.

Set beside Derain and Sextant, these names form the backbone of a new Burgundy. It is a version of the region that prizes life and drinkability over gloss, and it is some of the most exciting wine being made in France today.

For all their modern, natural outlook, these wines are still a study in Burgundian geography, and the map behind them is worth knowing. Home is Saint-Aubin, an under-the-radar village in the Côte de Beaune, hidden in a fold of hills right behind the celebrated slope of Montrachet. Being cooler and less glamorous than neighbouring Chassagne and Puligny, it long stayed affordable, which is partly why a natural grower could put down roots here. Its limestone and clay soils give whites of taut, stony precision and reds with a delicate mineral lift.

From that base, the vineyards fan out across the region. Up the Côte de Beaune in Pommard, heavier clay soils yield darker, firmer, more muscular Pinot Noir. To the south, in the Côte Chalonnaise village of Mercurey, the wines turn savoury and earthy and offer some of the best value in the whole cellar. The reach even extends north into the Côte de Nuits, drawing on fruit near Gevrey-Chambertin, a name synonymous with deep, structured reds.

One especially prized spot is the premier cru of En Remilly, high on the rocky shoulder that runs up from the grand crus themselves, a site capable of truly serious Chardonnay. Rounding it all out are the everyday Bourgogne wines from younger vines, the gentle way in.

Whether the fruit is estate-grown for Derain or bought in for Sextant, the same principle holds. Living soils, worked by hand, left to speak plainly, so each village and slope tells its own clear story in the glass.