100% Pinot Noir. "Petraea" is a réserve perpetuelle, originally begun by Francis in the 1990’s when he was still the winemaker for his family’s Domaine Raymond Boulard. After he split from the family, he and daughter Delphine decided to start a new version of Petraea in 2012, the first year of their organic certification. A perpetual reserve works like a solera: it is a multi-vintage blend, from which a portion is drawn off for bottling and replaced with new wine from the latest vintage. The name comes from the Latin name for the sessile oak, or quercus petraea, used for this special, single foudre. 

The Petraea fruit comes from a Boulard parcel of Pinot Noir in the lieu-dit of Le Murtet, part of the original family holdings in the village of Cormicy, at the northernmost limit of Champagne in the Massif de St. Thierry zone (NW of Reims). The vines are 60-80 years old and are planted on deep, sandy, limestone soils over hard limestone mother rock. The farming is certified-organic and practicing biodynamic; all work including harvest is manual. As for all Boulard wines, the grapes are picked late with high ripeness in order to achieve balance with little to no dosage.

The bunches are gently pressed with a small dose of sulfur (the only sulfur the wine will see), and, unusually, only the free-run (first-press) juice used. It is fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in 25-hectoliter oak foudres. The wine undergoes malolactic fermentation and a monthly batônnage in accordance with the lunar calendar. This new vintage is eventually added to the Petraea cask after around half of the wine already in the cask has been drawn off. That wine is bottled without fining and filtering. The bottles age sur latte for years, before being riddled and disgorged by hand with no dosage. The current 3-vintage blend is the third rendition, hence the "III" designation, found in small lettering on the back of the bottle; it was disgorged in 2022.