Sextant Maranges Pinot Noir

Sextant Maranges Pinot Noir is a natural single-variety Pinot Noir red wine produced by the Sextant winery in Burgundy, France.

All the grapes used by the Sextant winery to make wine come from plots that are cultivated without using herbicides or chemical products and are collected in small boxes.

To make the Sextant Maranges Pinot Noir wine, 80% of the clusters are kept whole and macerate for 15 days with only two or three cap plunges, which is where the layer of skins covering the liquid is pushed down so that they stay in contact with the must, which ferments with native yeasts in used oak barrels, aged between 5 and 10 years. The resulting wine ages for 12 months in the same barrels.

Julien Altaber was born in L’Auvergne but grew up in Burgundy and, living in the centre of Mâconnais, he was always expected to go into winemaking. In 2002, following various internships and having worked as a winemaker in different wineries, he arrived in Saint-Aubin to help with the harvest at the Dominique Derain winery, which is where he rediscovered his country origins and learned about biodynamic agriculture and natural wines.

This led him to set up the Sextant project in 2007, where he uses these principles to produce honest wines using high quality grapes.