The Business School Girl, the Bramble Thicket & the Forgotten Hand

Raphaëlle Guyot was born and raised in Paris, the daughter of a man who would become the main founder of one of France's most extraordinary cultural projects: Guédelon Castle, the medieval fortress being built from the ground up using only 13th-century techniques, tools, and materials, located just five minutes from where Raphaëlle would eventually establish her winery. But wine was not part of her childhood. She went to business school, studied commerce, and seemed destined for a conventional career — until, at age 18, she tasted Jo Landron's Muscadet "Amphibolite". That single glass was a lightning bolt. It rerouted her entire life. She realised that wine could be something more than a beverage — it could be a vocation, an art form, a way of reading the world.

After business school, Raphaëlle took a job as a French wine importer in China — a pragmatic first step that gave her exposure to the global wine trade and confirmed her desire to be on the production side, not the commercial side. She returned to France and enrolled at the lycée viticole in Beaune, earning her BTS in viticulture and oenology in 2015. But she did not stop at the diploma. What followed was a grand tour of France's most exciting natural wine estates — a pilgrimage of apprenticeships that reads like a who's-who of the movement. She interned with Athénaïs de Béru in Chablis, Cyril Fhal in Roussillon, Coralie and Damien Delecheneau in the Loire, and Thibault Liger-Belair in Nuits-Saint-Georges — one of Burgundy's most dynamic and forward-thinking estates. She worked with Vincent Pinard and La Grange Tiphaine in the Loire, and even spent a harvest in Georgia — the birthplace of wine — immersing herself in the qvevri tradition that has influenced so many natural winemakers. She also did internships at Clos du Rouge Gorge in the Roussillon and Ramaz Nikoladze in Georgia.

Before committing to her own domaine, Raphaëlle tested her independence with a tiny, short-lived négociant project with Antoine Lienhardt — just to see if she could really make wine on her own. She could. So in 2018, she returned to her native Yonne — not to Chablis, but to the Puisaye-Forterre, a forgotten corner of Burgundy roughly halfway between Sancerre and Chablis, where her family had roots. She took over a parcel completely overgrown by brambles in Sainte-Colombe-sur-Loing — a village so quiet, so off the beaten path, that the nearest petrol station is an adventure to find. In 2019, she added a hectare of previously neglected Pinot Noir vines. In 2020, she planted 0.75 hectares of Chardonnay from massal selections sourced from Sylvain Pataille — one of Marsannay's most respected organic vignerons. She now farms approximately 3 hectares of vines across two main parcels, with plans to expand to 6 hectares and eventually replant the full 10 hectares she has identified as suitable through archival research into the region's pre-phylloxera viticultural history.

The farm itself — La Ferme de l'Orme du Pont — is a 75-hectare polyculture estate surrounding a complex of 19th-century barn buildings that Raphaëlle has painstakingly restored: rebuilding floors, installing drains, reinforcing walls, breathing new life into crumbling structures while keeping the familiar hearth of the working farm. The courtyard is shared with neighbours — breakfast being made in one building, a farmer rigging up his plough in another — creating a sense of pastoral and communal peace that is rare in modern viticulture. Raphaëlle does not just make wine; she is building a complete agricultural ecosystem — grains, fruit trees, vines, and eventually livestock (cows and sheep) — modelled on the polyculture farms that once defined rural France. Her father's legacy at Guédelon — building a medieval castle with historical techniques — is echoed in her own project: rebuilding a lost viticultural landscape with her own hands, one vine at a time.

Raphaëlle Guyot's winemaking philosophy is one of low intervention, high precision, and deep respect for the living vineyard. Having learned from some of the most exacting natural winemakers in France — Thibault Liger-Belair's rigour, Athénaïs de Béru's purity, Cyril Fhal's intensity, Vincent Pinard's elegance — she approaches the cellar with a light touch and a sharp eye. The goal is not to impose a style but to let the Jurassic limestone and the marginal climate of the Yonne speak through the grapes — whether Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, or the more experimental varieties she is beginning to explore.

The whites are directly pressed, lightly decanted, and fermented with indigenous yeasts in tanks or barrels. They are aged for 5 to 18 months — with the Chardonnays now seeing up to 18 months in barrel, a technical improvement made possible by the spacious new winery. The extended ageing allows the youthful fruit to merge into more carved, mineral palate sensations, slowly transformed by oxygen. The reds are fermented with 0 to 100% whole cluster, depending on the vintage and the parcel, with 1 to 3 weeks of fermentation and maceration, followed by ageing for 5 to 12 months in tanks or barrels. Raphaëlle is not dogmatic about whole cluster; she makes the decision vintage by vintage, parcel by parcel, trusting her instincts.

Sulfur is used judiciously but minimally — a small dose after pressing for the whites (resulting in 15–30 ppm total SO₂ at bottling) and only after ageing for the reds (0–15 ppm total SO₂ at bottling). This is not zero-sulfur dogmatism; it is pragmatic minimalism — enough to stabilise the wine and protect it during transport, but not enough to mask its living character. The wines are not fined or filtered, and the only addition is the minimal sulfur. Raphaëlle also buys grapes from organic growers in the Auxerrois — from villages such as Saint-Bris and Irancy — to supplement her tiny estate production, vinifying these purchased grapes with the same low-intervention approach. The result is a portfolio of wines that share an unmistakable energy, depth, and purity — a through-line of Raphaëlle's deft hand that highlights the individual characteristics of each parcel.

Raphaëlle Guyot is not merely a vigneronne; she is a monument to the possibility of reinvention and resurrection — a woman who left Paris, wandered the wine world, and returned to a forgotten corner of Burgundy to rebuild a viticultural landscape that phylloxera had erased. In an era when Burgundy is increasingly defined by corporate consolidation, speculative investment, and the homogenisation of terroir, Raphaëlle has demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from a bramble thicket on a rocky limestone slope, farmed by a young woman with a BTS from Beaune and a shovel. Her wines — brimming with life, energy, and an unmistakable Jurassic limestone salinity — have already earned her a place alongside the most exciting young producers in France, distributed by the most respected names in the natural wine trade.

The legacy of Raphaëlle Guyot is the legacy of the intrepid hand in viticulture. She did not inherit a vineyard; she created one from a patch of brambles, applying the lessons of Thibault Liger-Belair's rigour, Athénaïs de Béru's purity, and her own stubborn determination to a terroir that most of the wine world had forgotten. She did not seek the glamour of the Côte d'Or; she sought the honesty of the Yonne — a place where wheat fields roll to the horizon and the only castle is one being built with medieval techniques by her father's successors. Her 75-hectare polyculture farm is not a side project; it is the foundation of her vision — a return to integrated agriculture, agroforestry, and the slow, patient work of building soil health and biodiversity. Like the artisans at Guédelon who forge iron and cut stone with 13th-century tools, Raphaëlle prunes, grafts, and harvests with her own hands — one vine at a time, one vintage at a time, one stone at a time.

The future of the project is tied to the future of forgotten terroirs in Burgundy — to the growing recognition that the best wines come not from the most famous appellations but from the most committed stewards of living soil. As Galatée continues to prove that Aligoté from the Yonne can be a wine of genuine finesse and mineral pleasure, as La Valse demonstrates that Saint-Bris Sauvignon can rival the great whites of the Loire, as Le Baiser shows that Irancy Pinot Noir carries a salinity and spice all its own, and as Les Robinettes reminds the world that Pinot from Jurassic limestone can be as precise as Chablis and as deep as the Côte d'Or, Raphaëlle Guyot remains what she has always intended to be: a business school girl who found her calling in a glass of Muscadet — structured not by marketing or technology but by bramble thickets, Jurassic limestone, massal selections from Sylvain Pataille, native yeast, minimal sulfur, three hectares of vines, seventy-five hectares of farm, and the eternal reminder that the forgotten corners of Burgundy are only forgotten until someone remembers them. The story of this estate is the story of a young woman who looked at a wheat field and saw a vineyard, and who is building that vision with the same medieval patience that her father applied to a castle — one stone, one vine, one vintage at a time.