We've been in France for just over a week now and I feel like the trip has entered a new phase.

The first week was all about discovery.

Meeting new producers. Exploring new regions.

Tasting wines we'd never seen before.

Now we're starting to make decisions.

And that's the hard part.

You can't just be scattergun and go, "Love those wines, love those wines, love those wines, let's buy them."

I'd love to.

But that's not how you build a wine portfolio.
Every producer has to fit. Every wine has to have a purpose. Every decision has to make sense for our customers, our restaurant partners and, ultimately, for a small business like ours.

That was very much the theme of yesterday.
We spent the day in Burgundy's Côte de Nuits, visiting two producers who could potentially become part of the next chapter of the Vintrepid portfolio.

Our first stop was in Nuits-Saint-Georges.
The domaine itself is fascinating. It's actually the combination of two historic family estates, one based in Chambolle-Musigny and the other in Nuits-Saint-Georges, which were brought together a few years ago.

We spent the morning with Paul, who is 28 years old and part of the next generation leading the estate forward.

Like so many of the young winemakers we've met on this trip, he's spent time overseas, working vintages in South Africa and Oregon before returning home to Burgundy.

It's actually one of the biggest surprises of the trip.

Everywhere we've gone, we've met young producers who are travelling, learning and bringing fresh ideas back to family estates.

The quality is going to another level.

And it's nothing like the stereotype people often have of French wine.

There's no stuffiness.
No formality.
Everyone's just wandering around in shorts and T-shirts.

We've been doing exactly the same.

I actually think Aussies fit in pretty well here.
The tasting itself was probably our favourite of the trip so far.

It was a complete masterclass in Pinot Noir.

We tasted wines from Chambolle-Musigny, Gevrey-Chambertin and Nuits-Saint-Georges, alongside Grand Cru wines including Clos de Vougeot and Charmes-Chambertin.

We tasted the 2022s and 2023s, along with wines still resting in barrel.

Paul was incredibly generous with both his time and his wines.

What excited me wasn't just how good they were.
It was that there was actually room to grow with the producer.

In Burgundy, that's becoming increasingly rare.

After lunch, we headed to Château de Charodon to meet Louis Vallon and taste his wines.

Louis was probably the biggest character we've met on the trip.

Funny, charismatic and incredibly driven.

The sort of person who can make an entire afternoon disappear without you noticing.
His story is a very Burgundy story.

Eventually he'll inherit significant vineyard holdings from his family, but succession in Burgundy is complicated and takes time.

In the meantime, he's building his project by leasing vineyards from family and friends and producing wines from across the Côte d'Or.

The wines were excellent.

The whites were probably the standout for me, with some beautiful Chassagne-Montrachet, Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet wines.

But what impressed me most was the ambition.
You get the sense that he's building something for the long term.

And that's the sort of thing that gets my attention.

As the day went on, I found myself reflecting on how much the portfolio has changed over the last two and a half years.

When we started Vintrepid, we focused on regions and producers that offered great value and could introduce people to a different side of French wine.

That remains incredibly important.

But as the business grows, we're also looking at where the gaps are.

Earlier in the trip, Chablis was a major focus because it was a genuine gap in the portfolio. We completed our blind tasting this week and, pleasingly, the wines we liked most were also the wines that made the most commercial sense.

That doesn't always happen.

This time it did.

Champagne has been another focus.

We'll be bringing in a new grower Champagne producer this year, which is incredibly exciting, and there are probably two or three others we could work with tomorrow if we wanted to.

The challenge is that we're a small business.

As much as I'd love to buy all the wine in France, that's not reality.

Every decision has to be the right one.

The same applies in Burgundy.

At the moment we've got the Côte de Beaune pretty well covered with Domaine Glantenay in Volnay and Domaine Lafouge in Auxey-Duresses.

What we're looking for now are the pieces that complete the puzzle.

Perhaps that's a producer in the Côte de Nuits.

Perhaps it's a top white Burgundy producer.

Perhaps it's both.

That's what this part of the trip is helping us figure out.

Today we're heading south to visit Domaine Gouffier and spend some time in the Mâconnais.

The wines will be different.

The conversations will be different.

But the challenge remains the same.

Finding great wine isn't the hard part.

Deciding which wines come home is.

Bringing These Wines Home

One of the biggest challenges of a buying trip isn't finding great producers.

It's deciding which opportunities to pursue.

Every bottle we import needs to earn its place in the portfolio.

That's what this stage of the trip is all about.

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