Mark Haisma

Mark Haisma is an Australian winemaker who spent ten years at Yarra Yering, in the Yarra Valley of Victoria, working alongside its founder Dr Bailey Carrodus, before moving to Burgundy in 2007. He vinified his first wines as a négociant in 2009, buying grapes from growers and working at first in rented cellar space in Gevrey-Chambertin. He now works from his own winery, on a business park at Gilly-lès-Cîteaux in the Côte de Nuits.

Most of his fruit is still bought in, vintage by vintage. Alongside it he farms about four hectares of his own, roughly two in Gevrey-Chambertin and two in the Mâconnais, where a small plot of Syrah is bottled as Vin de France under the Australian spelling Shiraz, the variety having no place in the Mâcon appellation. He has worked a long list of appellations over the years, from Bourgogne and Saint-Romain through Volnay, Pommard, Pernand-Vergelesses, Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint-Denis and Nuits-Saint-Georges up to grand cru, and he has bought Syrah in Cornas, in the northern Rhône, since 2010. The line-up changes from vintage to vintage, and several cuvées, the Volnay premier cru Les Frémiets among them, have not featured in his recent releases.

Fermentations run on indigenous yeasts. Whole bunches are used selectively, in proportions that vary by cuvée and year, of the order of 30 to 40 per cent on some reds; oak is restrained and sulphur kept low, with an addition at bottling. The parcels he owns are farmed organically. Volumes are small, a cuvée often amounting to a handful of barrels. Arcana Cabinet lists one wine from him, the Volnay 1er Cru Frémiets 2019, a Pinot Noir from the Côte de Beaune. Read the full story of the producer