The Original Ethical Winemaker: Inside Nicolas Joly’s Living Vineyard

Opera lovers have La Scala in Milan. Skiers have Wyoming’s Jackson Hole, surfers the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. For Biodynamic oenophiles, the ultimate wine pilgrimage is to La Coulee de Serrant in France’s Loire Valley. There, since 1984, Nicolas Joly has held court as one of the world’s most influential Biodynamic wine makers. His farming philosophy changed everything we believed about wine.

Joly’s vision has crossed continents. Acolytes from South Africa’s Stellenbosch to Argentina’s Mendoza, to our Napa Valley, have Biodynamic adherents producing notable wines.

Highly charismatic, articulate, and with a barely contained excitement for his passion—understanding natural forces and not messing with them in the making of wine, Nicolas greets us with a far more youthful intensity than his 80 years belie, “We were right. They were wrong,” are his first words. He’s referring to our shared conviction that the earth must be honored, not manipulated.

Perched on the edge of a comfortably worn upholstered chair in his family’s well-lived-in chateau that his surgeon father purchased in the 1960’s to bring his family closer to the countryside and all its bounty, Nicolas animatedly held court for an audience of two.

He didn’t mention it, but we later learned that the day before our meeting, he had been awarded the prestigious lifetime achievement award from Decanter Magazine for a combination of his pioneering Biodynamic farming, elevating his vineyard to global prominence, and consistently making award-winning wine.

Nicolas didn’t start from scratch. His father upheld the vigneron’s task of making quality wine, a responsibility given to the owner of the chateau when King Louis XI, around 1450, named it one of his seven court wines, an honor that Louis XIV continued. These Louis were a bit late in granting elite status to the 300+ year-old vineyard planted by Cistercian monks in 1130.

Initially, Nicolas didn’t plan to be a vigeron. After graduating from Columbia with an MBA (He said, “I didn’t know what to do, so I got a business degree”), followed by work in Quebec, bumming around Latin America, and finally two years in London with JP Morgan, which involved analyzing petrochemical fertilizer companies including the one making Round-up, Nicolas realized the work he was doing was detrimental to everything his family had taught him to respect in the natural world. So, he returned to his childhood home.

Somewhere along this journey, he became aware of polymath genius Rudoph Steiner, whose theory and application of Biodynamics was the antithesis of all chemical intervention. By happenstance, Francois Bouchet, a Biodynamic vigneron, farmed nearby in Saumur. He became Nicolas’ inspiration, although Nicolas confessed, “The first seven years were awkward. Agri-chemical farming is easy. Learning from nature is much more complicated. But is your goal the taste of the grapes or the technology?” 

A brief Steiner intro. Early in the 20^th century, Steiner believed soil was part of a life force whose components included planets, atmospheric molecules, and the microbic make-up of soil. To heal the earth was to make it teem with life. He prescribed procedures that considered the position of the planets, the orientation of crops, natural fertilizers derived from animals raised near the crops, and mixtures of “teas” placed in cow horns. Joly explained, “Steiner understood each vineyard extends up to the universe.”

The ultimate goal of following Steiner is to produce fantastic wine, which Joly has accomplished for decades. Production at La Coulee is very small. Along with his son and daughter (both of whom he has a legacy arrangement with), and a tiny staff, 11 hectares (27 acres) are farmed, producing only three cuvees: Coulee de Serrant, Clos de la Bergerie, and Les Vieux Clos. All together, they produce only 20,000 bottles. 

In what is now a far cry from Coulee’s marketing origins, where it was introduced in a private Paris wine-tasting salon and the winner was guaranteed to sell out, Coulee is on allocation. Nicolas holds some back for chateau visitors who have the opportunity to taste and purchase. The chateau is open year-round.

All three cuvees share the white grape, Chenin Blanc, which dominates the Loire. In an incredible feat of both political machination and viniculture responsibility, Joly has managed to create his own tiny appellation (AOC), i.e., he must conform to his own standards, which in turn are overseen by the larger wine governing bodies of both the Loire and France. Nicolas laughed heartily, “An inspector from the state came to make sure the grapes we picked were the ones used in the wine press. Absurd, no?” 

His grapes are carefully hand-harvested by a coterie of paid volunteers. Most are retired neighbors who come for the great harvest atmosphere and a farm-to-table meal. 

Based on the orientation and altitude of the vines, there are usually three harvests, but in 2025, Nicolas somberly reflected, “For the first time in 45 years, we had just one early harvest. The planet is changing.”

He believes, as so many other wine makers have come to understand, “If you have to act in the cellar, it means you missed something in the field.” 

An example of his focus on farming: After experimenting with cow, horse, pig, and chicken manure, Nicolas concluded that the first (from a special bovine breed he rescued from extinction), delivers the best results. This, plus the teas, provide all the fertilizer needed. His horses bring the grapes to the cellar, avoiding noxious tractor fumes.

Another way in which Coulee de Serrant diverges from conventional wine making is that only the yeasts found on the grapes and the cellar air are allowed to start the fermentation. Nicolas is horrified at the institutionalized acceptance of over 350 varieties of manufactured yeasts routinely used to manipulate the taste of the wine. “This is unacceptable if you care about your grape and its terroir.”

Oak barrel-aging takes place for six to eight months. When the wine is put into bottles for additional aging, it is neither fined (a process using egg albumin) nor filtered because “My wine must be alive, to have the spirit of our vineyard, to be true to the terroir, and contain the energy the cosmos put into it.”

The casual wine drinker may not be aware, but some of the most distinguished first growths of Bordeaux like Chateaux Margaux, Petrus, and Haut-Brion are using Biodynamic principles, as are top vineyards in Napa like Opus One. Several importers, like Jenny & Francois and David Skurnik focus on ethically made wine. Sommeliers at places as diverse as The Corner Office in remote Taos New Mexico and downtown NYC’s hipster Frenchette only serve ethically made wine. Arguably the world’s best wine writer, Jancis Robinson, believes a vintner making the effort to grow Biodynamic grapes delivers a decisively better experience. 

While the ethical movement is growing, it’s still tiny. Only 5% globally, 80% of which is from the E.U, are organic, Biodynamic, or natural. Nicolas observed, “It is difficult to mass-produce wine for a global market. It takes time and integrity to make it the right way.” 

Unfortunately, Demeter, the largest Biodynamic certifying organization, is having issues. One problem is that each country has its own guidelines, so wine certified in France will be different from that in Germany, while America has the strictest policies. Plus, the rules change in non-sensical ways. For example, a “tea” making machine that previously spun clockwise now must spin counterclockwise, requiring new, expensive equipment in order to comply. The result is that Joly and many others continue to practice Biodynamics but eschew Demeter certification. 

After hours spent together in his chateau and touring his sloping vineyards delineated by medieval walls overlooking the Loire, we met Nicolas’s friends—the heritage cows, horse, and donkey. We will always remember his parting words: “From birth to death, we have freedom. We can do what we want with our lives.”  He’s an extraordinary example of this credo.

The New Biodynamic Generation

As one of three aspiring winemakers, Haget bought a third of an already Biodynamic estate in 2017. The three men each had their own plot of land, but they worked in tandem, even sharing the farm’s original tractor. 

Haget told us, “You have to be creative when you farm Biodynamically. For example, to discourage the Suzuki fly, which punctures grape skins, destroying the fruit, I planted lavender on the west side of my fields, so the prevailing winds carry a scent.” It’s anathema to the pest, the best kind of natural pesticide. Conversely, in a nod to regenerative agriculture, his fields are surrounded by species of trees conducive to helpful insects.

Haget’s final unique step is his aging process. While most wines go from tank to barrel to bottle, Haget allows his whole grapes to ferment for approximately 15 days before moving them to French oak barrels for 18 months, followed by a return to the tank for 6 months, and an ultimate move to bottles for two years.

Unlike Joly with his single grape, Haget grows three, the largest being Cabernet Franc. This ancient varietal is the red staple of the Loire. Vignerons, like Haget, are working hard and largely succeeding in turning this grape into a “noble” one, equal to unblended varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

It’s inspiring to see the next generation take up the mantle of Biodynamic grape growing.

In the U.S., Emmanuel Haget can be found through Terrestrial Wines.