I was so enchanted that I started coming several times each year, meeting people, tasting wine, learning. These trips culminated in 1999 in a sabbatical from my previous career as a political journalist in Washington, D.C. I came and worked the harvest that year, and after the experience, it was only a question of when and how I was going to become a winemaker here.

I moved here permanently with my family in 2003, and started making wine in 2004, after qualifying in viticulture and oenology with a year's course at the famous Lycée Viticole of Beaune. I apprenticed with several top winemakers -- Patrice Rion in Premeaux-Prissey and Jean-Marc Pillot in Chassagne-Montrachet, to name two -- and thanks to them I learned to work both the vines and the wine with care and respect. I bring this attitude to everything I do: my work in my own vineyards, in the vineyards owned by others from whom I buy grapes, in the winery and in the cellar.

The estate at this point is very small, but its wines are not. All Domaine Dublère's wines demonstrate that it's not necessary to be big to be extraordinary.