Nothing against the 2009 labels we did, but our new labels are in a completely different league.
It’s my pleasure to offer you all a quick behind the scenes look at the printing of our 2010 and 2011 labels
Thank you again to everyone involved!
Ray
The Road to Burgundy – NOW Available for Pre-Order on Amazon.com and ITUNES!
Hello Everyone!
Amazon.com (as well as on amazon.uk, amazon.fr, etc) just added my upcoming book, The Road to Burgundy to their site for pre-order. You can find the link for the Kindle and Hardcover versions HERE! You can also find my book on iTunes!
Here is the synopsis:
An intoxicating memoir of an American who discovers a passion for French wine, and gambles everything to chase a dream of owning a vineyard in Burgundy
Ray Walker had a secure career in finance until a wine-tasting vacation ignited a passion that he couldn’t stifle. Ray neglected his work, spending hours poring over ancient French winemaking texts, learning the techniques and the language, and daydreaming about vineyards. After Ray experienced his first taste of wine from Burgundy, he could wait no longer. He quit his job and went to France to start a winery—with little money, a limited command of French, and virtually no winemaking experience.
Fueled by determination and joie de vivre, he immersed himself in the extraordinary history of Burgundy’s vineyards and began honing his skills. Ray became a pioneer in his use of ancient techniques in modern times and founded Maison Ilan. In 2009, Ray became the first non-French winemaker to purchase grapes and produce a wine from Le Chambertin, long considered to be one of the most revered and singular vineyards in the world.
Along with his struggle to capture his wine’s distinct terroir, Ray shares enthralling stories of late-night tastings, flying down the Route National on a vintage Peugeot bicycle with no brakes, and his journey to secure both the trust of his insular Burgundian neighbors and the region’s most coveted grapes. Capturing the sunlight, the smell of the damp soil, and the taste of superlative wine, The Road to Burgundy is a glorious celebration of finding one’s true path in life, and taking a chance—whatever the odds.
Thank you again for your support!!!
Cheers
Ray
POV 2012 MAISON ILAN Harvest Video
Maison Ilan’s 2012 Harvest Film from Maison ILAN on Vimeo.
Hello everyone
Here is a nearly eight minute video showing a POV experience at Maison Ilan! Get on your boots and push play! Maison Ilan’s 2012 Harvest Film
2010 and 2011 Label Mockups
Hello again,
it’s been too long since I’ve written an entry. I’ve been busy with finishing editing the manuscript of my book more than anything else. But, there has still been a lot of work to do on getting the 2010s out to everyone. We’ve already showed the 2010 Le Chambertin label earlier in the year. We then switched out the red bits of the flowers and such in favor of gold metallic. The final labels should be…interesting, if nothing more. As with the other labels, each of our labels is hand-drawn by Inslee Haynes.
Each of the bits that are gold-ish colored will be gold metallic on the label.
We hope that you enjoy the simplicity of our labels.
Cheers
Ray
The Road to Burgundy – My first book – Soon on Pre-Order
Hello everyone,
I’m pleased to share the jacket art for my upcoming book, The Road to Burgundy, which should be out July 2013. It will be available for preorder on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com under GOTHAM, an imprint of Penguin USA.
The book will detail much of my journey from my days working in California in Real Estate and in Finance, through discovering wine in Italy, studying Bordeaux – and then drinking/dreading it, to finding Burgundy by luck, leaving my career at Merrill Lynch to wash barrels in Sonoma County, California for one harvest before leaving to Burgundy to start our own winery, looking for grapes and trying to pull it all together, before finally moving my whole family to Burgundy for good. There is a lot to cover in just a span of seven years. Lots of food, travel, wine, studying French, looking for financing. Everything is in there. Best of all, it has given me the chance to write the story in my own words, which place you in my shoes for the highs and the lows up until this point.
I hope that you will all join me in retracing the steps of this surreal journey.
PS I feel quite fortunate that they asked me to shoot the cover art for my book. Didn’t expect that, and I think it turned out beyond expectations.
Cheers,
Ray
For those interested in joining our Client List
Hello everyone
first of all, let me say thank you for viewing our blog, and I appreciate you stopping into the website as well. I’ve received an overwhelming amount of requests for those of you that are interested in joining our mailing list. This Client Request Form is located here:
http://maisonilan.com/pages.php?lang=en&code=mailing-list
If you are interested in simply following our progress, you can of course follow us on Twitter:
@MaisonILAN or subscribe to updates from this blog in the upper right-hand corner.
If you’d like to see some videos I’ve put together on Burgundy (I need to do voice on many of them still, but it is a start):
http://vimeo.com/channels/burgundywinetv
If you ever have questions of any sort, please don’t be shy. If I can be of help, I will. If I’m uncertain, I’ll still try my best.
What I ask in return is patience in responding. This is the trade-off for not having automated emails. Every email is personal and I believe it best to treat it with the respect that they deserve. This takes time, so I do appreciate your patience.
Once again, thank you for your interest in what we are doing.
Cheers
Ray
MAISON ILAN
Commercial for Upcoming No Reservations Burgundy Episode
With Tony and Ludo at Caves Madeleine in Beaune
Hello everyone
I’ve been a fan of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservation” since the first episode many years ago. So, it is a surreal pleasure to have been able to meet him along with Chef Ludo Lefebvre when they were in Burgundy shooting a recent episode of the show. Just days earlier I had been contacted by the producer introducing herself and the show before I enthusiastically expressed how much of a fan I am of the show. To top all of this off, I will be appearing in the episode which is one of those geeky things that I’ve thought about before,but figured there was no way of it actually happening. “How do you think it would be to hang out with him? You think he’s really like that in person?” turned into “Damn, that was an amazing experience. I’m just glad with the three of us down there that they were able to get some audio besides bleeping us out. Must be the best sound editors in the business…
This is just the commercial. The full episode should air on October 1st on the Travel Channel.
Well, enjoy the video!
http://www.travelchannel.com/video/an-american-makes-french-wine
No Pro’s Allowed means that we need more impressions on CellarTracker!
Hello (again) everyone!
With my recent decision to ask professional tasters to not publish any reviews on our wines, a lot of people will be left in the dark on how the wines are tasting to you at a particular moment in time. In fairness, even a brief snapshot is helpful, though I find them to be too focused a shot on something that is constantly in motion.
Either way, their is use in impressions as long as they are not considered to be ‘The’ impression of a wine and the one impression that is used to define a wine for its complete life. To borrow another camera analogy (what?) I view it as taking a photo of an object that comes into frame for just a second before zipping by and darting off into one of many paths. There is no way to know exactly what the wine will be like down the road or in which direction it finally settled on before darting off again.
Alright, so we will move on before the soapbox crushes under my weight. To this end, while concrete notes from a voice deemed to be all knowing is of decreasing value to wine in general (in my opinion), I can see clearly that the equally distributed weight given to everyone is going to become increasingly important in the world of wine, as well as other arenas. With this considered, it would be helpful if more people gave their honest impression of our wines that they’ve tasted and or their complete experiences while at our winery or otherwise. While there may be times that a wine doesn’t show the way I, you or we’d like it to, I believe that overall this would be a help to all of us to have noted experiences to share with everyone.
Here is a list of all of the impressions on CellarTracker at present:
Please do keep in mind that I won’t ever take it personally however you find my wines to be. So, for example if you are on my mailing list and wish to stay on it, you don’t have to feel that complimentary things need be said. I’m in this for the long haul.
Thank you again for everyone’s interest and support, it certainly means something to me!
Cheers,
Ray
Fine print: First 101 point review gets a Maison Ilan t-shirt, waffle maker and slightly used box of Sea Monkeys.
When to open the 2009 Maison Ilan wines
Hello everyone
I am writing to you today to speak about the subject of drinking the 2009s. This is a subject that I’ve spoken about previously in general, but now is a good time to discuss my wines specifically.
If you want the cliff notes:
My wines are for drinking after a good amount of years, decades in bottle. If you are drinking them young, you are missing out on what makes these vineyards special. It is perfectly fine to be enthusiastic enough to open a bottle but the 2009s have been in bottle less than 2 years. With only having Grands Crus and Premiers Crus it is necessary to wait to see what is exactly in the bottle.
Ok, so you still want to open a bottle. You’ve purchased each of our vintages and you would like to know if they are worth the effort or capital in relation to the experience. I understand completely. In that case, open the wine, pour it into a decanter and give whichever one of them that you open at least two to three hours in the decanter prior to drinking it.
I know how it tastes now. Frankly, the Charmes-Chambertin has too much of an oaky taste when first opened, the Chaffots has some stems which dominate early on. Neither of them (I don’t open the Chambertin) are pleasant when first opened to my personal tastes. That said, with time in the decanter a different experience comes to the forefront. It isn’t the same as waiting at least 8 years on any of the wines but giving the wines air is really beneficial.
To give a specific example, I opened a Charmes-Chambertin today. I poured out a bit to see how things were. There was a warmth to the wine, not alcoholic, but spicy, too spicy. It seemed to sit on top of the fruit. This wasn’t like it was in barrel. There was also a Lot more structure which in barrel, the wine didn’t show much of one, it was all fruit. So, I checked in at one hour intervals while having the wine in a cheap 10€ decanter…which I usually despise since I think a lot of the fine detail of the aroma is lost in this exercise. The wine changed quite a bit up to the three to four hour mark, but it didn’t seem as pleasant as it once was in barrel. But at the five hour mark, the wine rounded out, the spice tones integrated (they are still there, but part of the wine now) and I can get more of an idea of the type of fruit that it has, instead of feeling that thee is just an overwhelming amount of it coupled with oak. So, while I absolutely deplore the idea of using a decanter with Every other wine that I could possibly open, I am now recommending this method for those that absolutely must open one of my wines today.
Why? Well, they aren’t meant to be consumed so early on. I purposely didn’t add any processes which could aid in early drinking such as racking, pumping over or stirring the less because I figured that it would potentially hurt what I view as the most intriguing time in a wine’s life, its later life. Besides this detail, wines at these particular classification level take time to show what they are all about.If you are drinking a Grand Cru or Premier Cru this early on, you could actually most likely have a better experience with a Village or Bourgogne wine that is closer to its aging band.
Lastly, due to our processes or more importantly lack of processes, there can be a healthy amount of reduction or presence of carbon dioxide in our wines. Both of these aid in the longevity of the wines but can hinder an early tasting experience. If you do decide to open one up early remember to give it air.
I do think that the new oak (up to 58% on Chambertin, 33% on Charmes-Chambertin and 0% on Chaffots) and cluster inputs (10% on Chaffots) contribute to an awkward phase in their youth. To be fair, some may enjoy wines in this awkward phase. But, whether someone enjoys them now or not, the wines aren’t showing who they actually are. These are inputs (tiny bit of stem inclusion and some new oak) which are unique to our 2009 vintage as we have since moved away from these two inputs Entirely.In other words, every wine since 2010 has been raised in Used oak barrels and everything has been completely de-stemmed with even the jacks being micro-sorted out of the bin that collects all of the de-stemmed fruit.
While I hesitate to explain to tasters what they are tasting in their individual experiences with our wines (I’ve made it a point to withhold from doing so) , I thought that my impressions could hopefully be of some use in this rare instance.
Thank you again for reading!
Cheers
Ray
PS Believe me, it does wonders!
A Brief Look at Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru “Les Feusselottes”, 2012
Hello everyone
it’s been busy around here lately with harvest approaching. I’ve also been busy writing the manuscript for my first book, The Road to Burgundy which has an estimated publishing date of July 2013. I’ve completed the first draft, and have already completed the majority of the first round edits. I received a preview of the hardback’s jacket art and cannot wait to share it with everyone shortly as soon as the publisher says it’s fine.
I’m nearly set up with just a week to go before our first fruit gets picked in Morey Saint Denis Premier Cru “Les Chaffots”. I’ve been going through all of the vineyards trying to get an idea of the state of the fruit at present. Unfortunately, two vineyards won’t be picked this year, Santenots in Meursault (Volnay) and Corbeaux (Gevrey). On top of that, Charmes-Chambertin will be at roughly half of the expected yield, meaning we should have around four barrels instead of eight! All three of these have had trouble with the conditions this year. But the blessing that needs to be focused on and thankful for is that all of the other vines have beautiful fruit hanging on them, including Charmes-Chambertin!!
Last year we brought you a small amount of videos. I liked putting them together, but I knew I could do better. So, this year, we will be documenting quite a bit of the harvest and sharing a good many with you all. Just two days ago, I went out to Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru “Les Feusselottes” and did a test run of a vineyard walkthrough. The four of you that have actually seen my vimeo movies have expressed an interest in their being voice over or frankly any sound at all. So, starting with this video, I will make sure to deliver videos with sound. 
Cheers
Ray
