The Forester & the Horsewoman & the Cooperative Village

The story of Domaine de L'Aubraine begins with a horse. And then another one. Caroline and Thibaut Pariset rode into the wine world on Comtois horses and set up shop in a village that had never seen independent vignerons. Thibaut was originally a forester — his mother was a teacher, his father a draughtsman in the construction industry — and Caroline worked with horses, though not in vineyards. "At one point I stopped working with horses, because I didn't want to be an instructor or to work at a riding school," Caroline remembers. "I wanted to work outdoors." She got a job at a supermarket instead. At the same time, she worked in vineyards on the side, and the winegrower kept asking if she could use her horse to plough his land. She didn't have the knowledge. She didn't have the experience. Eventually, she gave in.

In 2013, Caroline and Thibaut created Traits du Mâconnais — a service offering horse-ploughing to vignerons across the Mâconnais. They bought a second horse, and by the time Caroline had finished her training, they already had clients. For years, they travelled from vineyard to vineyard with their horses, working the soils of estates across the region. Today they have only one client left — Julien Guillot at the legendary Clos des Vignes du Maynes — because their own domaine now consumes all their time. "Also, the periods for work have become very short," Thibaut notes. "Ten years ago we had ten days to work from the south of the Mâconnais to the north. Today the climate has changed and everything has to be done at the same time. And that is not possible."

The domaine itself was founded in 2019 in Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé, a village of 600 inhabitants in the northern Mâconnais. They started with 3.06 hectares, though only 2.10 hectares produced grapes that first year — the rest was still being planted. The original idea was to grow slowly by self-financing, to sell grapes, and to be organic from the very beginning. But then COVID-19 hit, and they were forced to start making wine earlier than planned. They bought second-hand tanks and a press. The equipment was outdated. The buildings were not ready — the winery still had a beaten earth floor downstairs. In the end, they managed to get things working, and 2020 saw them produce 5,000 bottles of wine. The following year, weather conditions wiped out the whole crop. But in 2022 they were back with 2,500 bottles, and in 2023 with 17,000. In 2024, for the first time, they vinified grapes from all their vineyards.

Neither Caroline nor Thibaut come from a winemaking family. They are self-made vignerons who arrived at wine through soil — through the physical, daily labour of working the earth with animals. Their path is unusual, and they know it. "We are quite unusual in that respect," Thibaut says. "Our path over the past 20 years has been a different one." That difference is visible in every aspect of the estate: the horse-ploughed vineyards, the organic certification obtained from day one, the biodynamic principles they follow without fanfare, and the wines that are made with minimal intervention but obsessive attention to detail. They are peasants first, vignerons second — and the wine tastes of that humility.

The winemaking philosophy at Domaine de L'Aubraine is governed by a paradox: minimal intervention in the cellar, but obsessive attention to the smallest detail. "We don't interfere much in the cellar, but we do pay attention to the smallest detail," they say. "We try modestly to produce quality wines that are sincere and faithful to their terroir." This sincerity begins in the vineyard — the grapes are hand-harvested at maturity and gently pressed to respect the nature of the terroirs. After a light débourbage, the indigenous yeasts present on the grapes begin fermentation naturally. The malolactic fermentation follows spontaneously. There is no inoculation, no enzymatic correction, no chaptalisation, and no artificial acceleration.

The élevage is carried out on fine lees in stainless steel tanks, fûts, or demi-muids until early summer. The choice of vessel is determined by the parcel and the vintage, not by a predetermined recipe. En l'Aubraine — the young vines on chalky limestone — is aged entirely in stainless steel to preserve its freshness, its primary fruit, and its mineral clarity. Sur le Four — the older vines on reddish manganese soil — is split between 50% demi-muids and 50% steel, adding texture and oxidative complexity without the vanilla or toast of new wood. The Vigne de Bassy, the assemblage, is aged entirely in old barrels (less than one new barrel per year) to integrate the two terroirs into a harmonious whole. The Pinot Noir from La Guigne is aged on fine lees, predominantly in old wood, allowing the 1965 vines to speak with a voice that is both fragile and profound.

The wines are not filtered. They are not fined with animal products or chemical agents. The Parisets bottle everything themselves, by hand, ensuring that each bottle carries the exact same care that went into the vineyard. Sulphur is used sparingly and pragmatically — the MMXXIII cuvée, a prototype macerated Chardonnay, was made in 2023 entirely without sulphite, but the classic cuvées receive minimal doses to protect them during bottling and transport. The result is a range of wines that taste unmistakably of the northern Mâconnais: clean, mineral, saline, and honest. As La Revue des Vins de France noted of the En l'Aubraine 2023: "Profil épuré et frais, douceur de texture, fins amers — un vin assez délicat, au profil sobre, dont nous aimons la fraîcheur et la retenue."

The cellar itself is a testament to the estate's self-made origins. In 2020, when COVID forced the Parisets to vinify their own grapes for the first time, the building was not ready. The floor downstairs was still beaten earth. The tanks were second-hand. The press was outdated. But the wine was made anyway — 5,000 bottles of it — and it established the template that continues today: indigenous yeasts, gentle pressing, lees ageing, no filtration, and an absolute refusal to let imperfect conditions justify artificial correction. The cellar has since been improved, but the philosophy remains unchanged. The wine is accompanied without artifice until the bottle, preserving its qualities, procuring emotion, and reflecting its terroir.

To understand Domaine de L'Aubraine, one must understand the concept of the peasant vigneron — a viticultural identity that is increasingly rare in Burgundy, where the price of land has made small, independent farming almost impossible and where the grand cru system favours those with capital over those with calluses. Caroline and Thibaut Pariset are not investors who bought a vineyard; they are workers who built one. They arrived at wine through the soil — through the daily, physical labour of ploughing with horses, of rebuilding dry-stone walls, of harvesting by hand in a village where everyone else delivers their grapes to the cooperative. Their identity is rooted in the peasant tradition of the Mâconnais: small scale, self-financing, organic from the start, and absolutely independent.

The cooperative defiance that the Parisets embody is equally central. Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé is a cooperative village — always has been. The Cave de Lugny dominates the Mâcon-Lugny appellation so completely that the Parisets refuse to use it, bottling instead as Mâcon-Villages to avoid the association. This is not merely a commercial decision; it is a political one. In a village of 600 inhabitants, being the only independent vigneron means being visible, being questioned, and being alone. The Parisets have accepted this isolation as the price of sincerity. They do not make wine for the cooperative's market; they make wine for their own convictions — wines that are "sincere and faithful to their terroir," as they say, and that prove that another method of production is possible even in the most unlikely places.

The future of Domaine de L'Aubraine is tied to the deepening of Caroline and Thibaut's relationship with their five hectares — the continued organic and biodynamic cultivation of En l'Aubraine, Sur le Four, and La Guigne, the maturation of their young vines into old vines, the refinement of their horse-ploughed precision, the development of the Vigne de Demain agroforestry project, and the strengthening of their position in the natural wine markets of France, Europe, and beyond. The En l'Aubraine will continue to express the fresh, chalky purity of the young-vine monopole. The Sur le Four will continue to demonstrate what 1980s vines on manganese soil can achieve. The Vigne de Bassy will continue to marry the two into a harmonious whole. And the MMXXIII will continue to test the boundaries of what macerated Chardonnay from the Mâconnais can become.

In an age of industrial wine production, of chemical agriculture and cooperative homogenisation, Domaine de L'Aubraine stands as a compelling alternative — not because it rejects the Mâconnais but because it has embraced a different Mâconnais, one that values horse labour over tractor efficiency, organic farming over chemical convenience, indigenous yeasts over laboratory inoculation, old barrels over new-oak toast, individual parcels over blended anonymity, peasant scale over corporate expansion, and the specific voice of Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé over the standardised replication of a global style. Caroline and Thibaut Pariset are not merely making wine; they are making a space — a space where a forester and a horsewoman can become vignerons, where a cooperative village can produce independent wine, where three Comtois horses can plough a monopole, and where the northern Mâconnais can produce wines that are as pure, as precise, and as unforgettable as the chalky limestone from which they come. The 2013 horse-ploughing service, the 2019 founding, the 2020 beaten-earth cellar, the 2023 MMXXIII prototype, the 1965 Pinot Noir vines, the biodynamic practice, the only independent estate in the village, and the name that has meant peasant Burgundy for five years: all united in one bottle, one estate, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, place-specific, heritage-rooted, creatively evolving artisan wine in the northern Mâconnais.