Raise a glass to patience

Nicholas Potel (top) approaches his wines in a very hands-on and traditional way at his Domaine de Bellene.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Nicolas Potel brings premium wines made the old way to China.

This is a little embarrassing: I have a sudden, mad desire to see Nicolas Potel's bare feet.

The well-dressed French winemaker has recently opened a new warehouse for servicing his mainland clients, as high-end hotels in China's big cities seek out exciting new vintages.

I should be focused on the 1995 Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru that he is about to decant. Instead I steal a glance under the table. Is he wearing socks?

Potel, chatting comfortably about terroir and such, senses nothing amiss, but his extremely proper colleague is now giving me an odd look.

I quickly put forward the question that's driving my distraction: "Do you really still stomp on grapes with your feet at your winery?" I've asked many winemakers about this, only to get a look, as if to say, how old are you?

But Potel, who was just about to get way too technical about minerals, breaks into a huge smile.

"But of course!" he says, stopping short of revealing his purple-stained soles. His hand-picked grapes, he adds, are processed in basket presses as well as by human feet.

In the fields of Burgundy at Potel's flagship estate, Domaine de Bellene, there is no mechanical harvesting. Horses pull the plows. Live chickens scratch around the totally organic vineyard, converting grass and insects into nutrient-rich fertilizer. In the winery, there are buckets to move the nectar of Bacchus from one stage to the next, not pumps. There are no electric bulbs - Potel's eyes light up as he waxes eloquent about candles. "We keep the cellar at 20 degrees," he says, "but temperature is not the only factor. Light stimulates oxidation, too."