The Burnt Houses, the Augé Inheritance & a Horse Named Danseur
An Alsatian caviste who ran a natural wine brasserie in Buenos Aires, trained under Bruno Schueller, and was handed one of France's pioneering biodynamic estates while pruning its vines — Paul Gillet and his partner Corinne keep the flame of Les Maisons Brûlées burning exactly as Michel Augé lit it: horse in the vineyard, nothing in the wine.
Origin — From Alsace to Argentina to the Cher
Paul Gillet was born into an Alsatian wine family, but his path to the vineyard ran the long way around the world. He began as a caviste, and in 2002 a first encounter with natural wine — above all the bottles of Bruno Schueller, Alsace's great iconoclast — left a mark that never faded. Yet before the vines claimed him, South America did: in 2007 he opened a brasserie in Buenos Aires, championing Argentine growers who worked in the same natural spirit.
The arrival of a third child brought Paul and Corinne home to France. Paul enrolled in Alsace, earned his viticulture-oenology diploma, and went to learn at the source — a stage with Bruno Schueller that stretched six months beyond its end. He was ready for vines of his own; he just didn't know where.
The answer came in January 2013, at pruning shears' length. Paul had come to the Cher valley to prune for Michel Augé, a towering figure of French biodynamics — co-founder of one of the country's first biodynamic cooperatives, and since 1993 the steward of Les Maisons Brûlées, certified biodynamic as early as 1994. Augé was ready to retire. He looked at the young Alsatian working his rows and proposed the unthinkable: take the whole domaine. By September 2013, Paul and Corinne had moved in.
It was a passing of the torch in the truest sense — not a purchase so much as an adoption. The Gillets inherited not just vines but a philosophy in working order: thirty years of organic and biodynamic farming, a cellar that had never known correction, and a plough horse named Danseur, who came with the estate and still works it today.
The Place — A North-Facing Haven Above the Cher
Pouillé sits upstream of Chenonceau on the quiet Cher, where low hills of limestone, flint and clay rise from the river plain. The estate's heart is a single block around the house — vines in green bands alternating with woodland — on a mostly north-facing coteau of argile à silex over clay rock, a stone's throw from the fabled former slopes of Clos Roche Blanche.
Eight Varieties, One Living Block
Sauvignon, Menu Pineau (Orbois) and Chardonnay; Gamay, Pinot Noir, Pineau d'Aunis, Côt, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon — vines from 30 to 70 years old, some co-planted, on flint-clay soils strewn with fossils and fist-sized silex. Le Herdeleau and Maisons Brûlées are the great parcels.
Thirty Years Without Chemistry
Organic and biodynamic since 1994 — certified under Augé, continued without interruption by the Gillets. Soils are worked only to compete with natural grass cover, never left bare, so the flora that hosts the fauna stays intact. Ecocert certified; Demeter was set aside in 2022 on principle, the practices unchanged.
Danseur the Plough Horse
Part of the vineyard is still worked by Danseur, the mare inherited from Michel Augé — hooves instead of tyres, no compaction, and a pace of work that lets you notice the vineyard rather than just cross it.
Hallowed Neighbours
The R2L'O parcel is nearly contiguous with the former Clos Roche Blanche, the cult domaine whose vines now pass to Noëlla Morantin, Laurent Saillard and Julien Pineau. This quiet Cher hillside is hallowed ground for French natural wine.
Winemaking — Whole Bunches, a Coquard Press, and Nothing Else
The key to the cellar is decided in the vineyard: harvest dates chosen with surgical care, cuvée by cuvée. Everything is worked as whole bunches — direct-pressed or macerated — through a vertical Coquard press of the kind Champagne once used, pressing slowly and at low intensity so the skins give their juice but never their harshness. The approach to the juice is, in the Gillets' words, "without scientific a priori": taste and feel over analysis and adjustment.
Wines age in wood — foudres, demi-muids, old barrels of several wines — the pétillants excepted. Bottling is done by hand, by gravity, with no added sulfites, no oenological products, no filtration, no fining, no temperature control. After rare fermentation hiccups in the early vintages of 2013–2015, sulfur was renounced entirely, on conviction: sulfites "freeze and mineralize the expression of the living."
The Gillets vinify exclusively their own grapes — a rule broken only once, in mildew-ravaged 2024, when neighbour Damien Menut sold them ten hectolitres of Gamay to keep the cellar full. Six to ten cuvées a year, each an honest account of a parcel and a season.
The Wines — Moon Dust, Erebus and Other Poems
Six to ten cuvées a year from the same flint-clay hillside — whites of ripeness without heaviness, reds of dark fruit on a wire of acid, and some of the Loire's most characterful pét-nats.
Silène
Estate whiteSauvignon from several parcels between plateaux and coteaux, picked ripe to escape blackcurrant bud and boxwood, sometimes with a light skin maceration. A year in foudre and barrel; mineral, textural, electric.
Poussière de Lune
Estate white"Moon dust" — 70-year-old Sauvignon and 40-year-old Menu Pineau from Le Herdeleau, harvested and pressed together: the Sauvignon in slight surmaturité, the Menu Pineau on freshness for the skeleton. Long élevage; honey, white flowers, deep stone.
Ça Me…
Skin-contact whiteSauvignon from the parcel nicknamed "Sam", macerated around three weeks and raised a year in wood. A tannic frame resting on bitters beneath exotic aromatics — a true wine of the table when it succeeds, which it does.
R2L'O
Estate redThe flagship red, named for Le Herdeleau: its Pinot Noirs picked with 60-year-old Gamay and 50-year-old Pineau d'Aunis at a shared point of ripeness. Two to three weeks whole-bunch, ten to fifteen months in demi-muids — dark Loire fruit with a bright, brooding spine.
Érèbe
Estate redErebus — the deep one. Rustic, tannic Côt and Cabernet Franc picked the same day and macerated together in whole bunches for a fortnight, then 18 to 24 months under wood. Tannins intact, fruit unbroken; decant and be rewarded.
Maisons Bullées
Pétillant naturelThe punning pet-nat pair: Blanc from Sauvignon (sometimes a little Chardonnay), Rosé from 100% Gamay — white flowers, delicate aromatics, a lick of bitters, fine thirst-quenching bubbles. Cousins Uccello (Chardonnay, 18+ months on lees) and Altérité (Cabernet Sauvignon) join in the right years.
Legacy — Keeping a Thirty-Year Flame Alight
Les Maisons Brûlées carries a double legacy. There is the estate itself — one of France's earliest biodynamic vineyards, proof since 1994 that the Cher valley could farm without chemistry long before it was fashionable. And there is the transmission: Michel Augé didn't sell to the highest bidder but chose a successor at the pruning shears, the way knowledge itself passes in wine — hand to hand, row to row.
The Gillets have honoured both. The farming never wavered; the cellar never learned correction. When they stepped away from Demeter certification in 2022, it was on ideological principle, not practice — the preparations, the horse, the calendar all remain. What changed under their hands is the wines' reach: from a local secret of the Augé years to bottles sought by natural wine importers from Chicago to Tokyo.
On a slope shadowed by the memory of Clos Roche Blanche, with Noëlla Morantin and Julien Pineau for neighbours and Danseur's hoofbeats in the rows, Les Maisons Brûlées stands for the quietest, hardest thing in natural wine: continuity. The burnt houses are still warm.