François Lamarche and his wife Marie-Blanche ran Domaine Lamarche since the death of his father Henry in 85 till his retirement in 2006. Starting 2018 vintage, François’s daughter Nicole officially changed the domaine’s name to Nicole Lamarche. Nicole is responsible for the vineyards and winemaking of the Domaine, and her objective is to respect the terroir of each wine and keep the viticulture traditional. When Nathalie (Geneviève’s daughter / Geneviève Lamarche *the sister of François ) the sales part.
The vineyard portfolio of this important Domaine has been created masterfully over three generations of the Lamarche family. Most of the domaine’s holdings are in the village of Vosne-Romanée. The jewel in the crown is the monopole vineyard of La Grande Rue, a 1.65 ha “sandwiched” between the vineyards of Romanée-Conti and La Romanée on the north, and La Tâche on the south. Interestingly, this fine vineyard was honored Grand Cru classification only in 1992 (this was not done in the original classification of the 1930s because of tax reasons…). This is the second smallest Grand Cru in the Côte d’Or (the smallest is La Romanée with 0.85 ha). The reclassification was not easy to achieve back in 1992. For years, the quality of the wines didn’t match the ones of its neighboring prestigious vineyard, mainly due to poor vineyard management and winemaking.
The other domaine’s vineyards include fine parcels of Grands-Échezeaux, Échezeaux and unique mélange of Clos de Vougeot from three different parcels located at different parts of the Clos, an array of top-notch Premier Crus in Vosne Romanée inc. Les Malconsorts, Les Suchots, Les Chaumes, La Croix Rameau (with recent addition of Nuits-Saint-Georges “Les Cras”). Over the years, it took hard work to bring the Domaine back on track. The hard work was evident since the 1999 vintage and dramatically since 2005, two years after Nicole completed her diploma in Oenology and joined her father in the Domaine. Since 2006 Nicole has been solely in charge of the Domaine, and she got the freedom to run the Domaine as per her own philosophy. The vineyard practice was changed to biological cultivation, the barrels’ suppliers were changed, and less new wood was present (maximum 50% for the top wines depending on the vintage). The winery equipment was updated to modern standards.
Lamarche is now a top-notch Domaine, with wines expressing themselves through their terroir rather than power.