Lucien Le Moine is a relatively young and small négociant house, established in 1999 in Beaune, Burgundy. The house is run by the co-founder - Mounir Saouma, whose wines are known for being accurate and focused expression of its origin, with unique quality. They produce wines made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. All of their wines are elevated in Jupilles barrels (100% new oak) from the Vosges, (provided by Stéphane Chassin) where the grain is typically a little less tight.

Top wines of Lucien Le Moine are: Romanée Grand Cru Saint-Vivant, and Gevrey-Chambertin Grand Cru Clos de Bèze. Romanée Grand Cru Saint-Vivant 2005 scored 97-99, and Gevrey-Chambertin Grand Cru Clos de Bèze 2005 scored 96-98 and 2008 scored 96-97 by the Wine Advocate. Robert Parker comments on Romanée Grand Cru Saint-Vivant 2005: “The single barrel of 2005 Romanee-St.-Vivant at this address smells of roasted game, super-concentrated, fresh purple plum, black raspberry, cumin, coriander and other exotic spices. Fantastically clear, concentrated and gripping, with tart fruit skin, concentrated, salty, soy-drenched meatiness, mysterious florality, and tactile spiciness, this finishes with length, eloquence and intrigue like some great, vinous novel. (Any suspicions I may have harbored, incidentally – and I did – that this famous grand cru simply couldn’t challenge the best of red Burgundy, were forever shattered by this wine and several of its 2005 counterparts.)”.

The roots of this haute-couture négociant house originate from Mounir Saouma, who dedicated more than 6 years to the vineyards in particular. He studied viticulture and oenology in Montpellier and worked for several well-known wineries, both in France and in the USA. In 1999 Mounir and his wife Rotem Saouma, established Lucien Le Moine. Rotem comes from a cheese-making family, but nevertheless, she learned agriculture oriented towards wine and received a national prize from the French Academy of Agriculture for a study on the Côte d'Or. The Saouma family produce Grands Crus, Premiers Crus and village-level wines from the Côte d'Or, selecting the best crus in each village, and renewing it depending on each year. The production does not exceed 100 barrels a year, due to the limited cellar space. Some of the chosen crus may only consist of one barrel or 300 bottles on average.

There is actually no winemaking involved, as the wines reaches Lucien Lemoine after fermentation. Mounir Saouma has no specific requirements as to how the grapes should have been grown, but the vinification should have been done by hand. There are no contracts with any growers. The winemaker follows a flexible vinification approach as he adjusts it to each year’s vintage. The main principle is to make a very early selection of wines, that allows controlling the wines from the very beginning to the bottling. So the wines are purchased at a very early stage. Mounir Saouma practices wine aging in a closed cellar, to keep humidity and low temperature through spring, which allows pushing the malolactic fermentation late into summer. The natural CO2 associated with this fermentation protects the wines during the hot summer enabling an extremely limited use of SO2. The Saouma family follows the maturity of each wine barrel by tasting it twice a month. The wines are bottled directly from barrel after a full moon, where atmospheric pressure is favorable. The selected wines are neither fined, blended nor filtered. Lucien Lemoine wines are advised to be decanted for both colours.