Fanny Sabre

France, Burgundy

The Story

Fanny Sabre didn't plan to be a winemaker. She was at university studying law when her father died, and she took over the running of the estate. Initially, it was with the help of natural wine pioneer Philippe Pacalet who stepped in to help following Fanny’s father’s death. He taught Fanny how to farm organically.

The grapes are all grown organically and harvested manually. Manual ploughing takes place between the rows of vines, which are sprayed only with organic mixtures. No herbicides are used. The wines are produced on a small scale, with each vine monitored closely and with meticulous attention to detail in the cellar. No synthetic chemicals are added, with natural treatments used instead during the process.

Listen to Fanny Sabre on Interpreting Wine by Lawrence Francis.

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The People

Fanny Sabre

Fanny Sabre’s wines offer the perfect balance between masculinity and femininity, tannins and acidity; fruit and aroma.

Her labels are feminine and playful as seen on the Cuvée Anatole that shows a flirtatiously dressed woman bending over to reveal (almost) her derrière while playing boule. This comes from the French expression, "faire Fanny", which means to score no points in boule. The origins of the story behind this expression are unknown. The tradition in France is that when playing boule, the player who scores no points has to kiss the derrière of Fanny…

The Place

Burgundy, France

The cellar itself is in the small town of Pommard. One of the rooms Fanny uses for storing the wines was once a gun powder room, and above it once stood the local fort. The walls hang with ancient yeasts and microbes that are vital to the fermentation process. The grapes are crushed using a pneumatic press before the white wines are fermented in old oak barrels, and wood and concrete vats are used for the whole-bunch maceration of the reds. Indigenous local yeasts replace the standard imported species used conventionally.

The wines are then aged for at least a year, without racking or fining and with only one very light stirring. The different wines are then put in stainless steel vats for three to four months before they are roughly filtrated and bottled by hand using a gravity bottle filler and a manual corker. Despite the tiny estate, Fanny Sabre still manages to use the terroir effectively enough to produce 15 different wines. In her own words, she wants her wines to be alive. They certainly liven up those who enjoy her wines.