Mickaël Bourg

Domaine Mickaël Bourg
Cornas, France

Mika Bourg is one of those winemakers you don't need to speak french to understand; he laughs loud, he smiles a lot, he brings you along for the ride with an energy and enthusiasm that's contagious.

Mika is the l'enfant terrible of Cornas.  He spent his youth rambling around the steep slopes of the hill, having a puff in the ramshackle vineyard huts and gazing out over the city below. Cornas is in his blood. He learned winemaking from Matthieu Barret (after working for a few years as a mechanic), with whom he apprenticed. Barret helped him get started making his own wines in 2006. Over the years he's cobbled together roughly 1.5 hectare of vines in the Cornas and Saint Peray AOCs. He began with just a half hectare of land. Some rows are located on plots so extremely steep even a nimble horse can't pull the plow, so he attaches himself to the hill with a cable to pick.

When Mika first joined the Mc2 family in 2008 he was making only one barrique of Cornas and Saint Peray per vintage.
These days production levels have increased ever-so-slightly (to roughly 4 barrique of red and white respectively, nearly the limit of what he can produce working solo). He uses only organic farming methods.

His syrah is whole-cluster fermented before going into barrique for the Cornas. Fermentation occurs naturally, using only indigenous yeasts, then the wine goes into 1 or 2 years old barriques for up to 18 months. The marsanne goes into new wood for his Saint Peray.