Domaine Dozon: Eric Santier, From Dubai to the Loire

Fancy a little trip back to your roots? Today, Eric Santier tells us about his career change to winemaking and how he took over Domaine Dozon: 14 hectares steeped in history in his native Loire region.

Insights from Eric Santier, winemaker at Domaine Dozon (Loire): “Wine wasn’t an obvious career choice”

I’m originally from Chinon, but a career in wine wasn’t a given for me. My childhood friends came from families of winemakers, so that was my only connection to the industry. I took my first steps in the world of wine during the harvest… and with each harvest that followed, the world of wine really won me over! Yet I chose to study business to pursue a career in the food industry and worked, among other things, for the Sopexa agency in Dubai for eight years. That was enough time for my youthful aspirations to resurface and take shape, leading me to decide in 2011 to return to France and the vineyards. Changing course, I went back to school, this time focusing on viticulture and oenology at Bordeaux Sciences Agro. After internships in the Bordeaux region, I made my big return to Chinon, in the Loire Valley, to work with Bernard and Mathieu Baudry.

Eric Santier’s Domaine Dozon: A New Approach to Terroir in the Loire

It was pure chance that led me to the Dozon family: in 2013, I was offered the opportunity to take over the estate, which had been in the family for five generations. Eager for new adventures, I jumped at the chance! To get the takeover project off the ground—and, above all, to finance it—three friends joined me as partners. In terms of labor, I chose to retain the staff already working at the estate, but also to hire two workers to assist me on a daily basis. While the terroir remains the same—clay-siliceous soils at the top of the hillsides and clay-limestone soils at the bottom—I’ve chosen to cultivate the vines with a new approach. Composed of 97% Cabernet Franc and 3% Chenin, I work the vineyard to produce wines that are less full-bodied, with softer tannins than before, and to focus more on suppleness and freshness. Thus, we delay the harvest dates to allow for greater ripeness, vatting periods are shorter, and extractions are more intense. Ultimately, we adjust our approach based on the sensations experienced during tasting.

Technique, ethics, and a passion for winemaking in the Chinon AOC

My favorite part is definitely the start of the winemaking process, and then when the harvest finally arrives! And the two years I spent with Bernard and Mathieu Baudry certainly played a big part in that. They instilled in me not only a genuine passion for their approach to viticulture, but also humility, despite their great reputation in Chinon. This spirit of self-reflection seems essential to me today in our profession; there are always improvements to be made. This is also true in terms of marketing. Right now, I’m still in the process of getting things up and running at the estate, but I’d like to work with new distributors and innovative channels— Les Grappes is a great example of this! I’m not focused on volume, but I’m committed to continuously improving our techniques to move upmarket. It’s with this approach that we produced the Le Petit Chemin cuvée: a new 2014 vintage for which we selected specific plots and established a meticulous, carefully considered winemaking process to create a wine that’s as easy-drinking as can be.