GENERALLY speaking, I find that the most exciting Burgundy wines are made by small, independent producers.

The best are able to lavish exceptional care on their vineyards and can devote great attention to detail in making and ageing their wine, which are, in the best sense, hand crafted.

But there are also a few big merchant houses that aim for and achieve the same high standards. Louis Jadot is one of them.

This is clear as soon as you walk into their fabulous winery, just outside Beaune. Since the year before last there have been separate cellars for the production of red and white wine.

The red cellar is especially impressive; a mini-cathedral of wine-making, with its ordered, concentric circles of traditional, oak, open top fermenters and their modern stainless steel alternatives. Everything is spotless, traceable and highly efficient.

I was shown round by the company’s general manager Dominique Mounier. He rattled off facts and figures faster than I could note them. I was lost as he listed the vineyards owned by Louis Jadot across Burgundy, but was then reprieved by a little map which lists them all – a roll call of the region’s finest sites. It’s all mightily impressive.

Dominique goes to some lengths to stress Jadot’s commitment to quality, no matter how long it takes to achieve it. He insists that the only reason they have been experimenting with organic and even biodynamic viticulture on 14 hectares, spread over a number of vineyards over the last few years, is to produce quality.

“We’re not interested in labelling the wine as organic,” he says, “we simply believe that biodynamic and organic systems can produce quality wine; but it’s a long-haul process.”

All the grapes are hand-harvested and only indigenous, ambient yeasts are used to ferment the wine. Again, nothing is hurried. “You only need to use selected yeasts if you’re in a hurry,” he told me. “And if you do so, you change the taste of the wine. That’s why so much Beaujolais Nouveau seems to taste like bananas – they’re in a hurry to get the fermentation over.”

For similar reasons, they are reluctant to stir up the fine lees that falls to the bottle of the casks of white wine. Some Burgundy growers swear by lees stirring to make their wine richer and creamier. “We don’t do it too much,” he insists, “lees-stirring is done when you want to have a quick effect. We’re not in a hurry.”

But Louis Jadot is certainly not a firm with an unbending commitment to traditional methods as I discovered when we got on to the subject of the vexed question of corks and screw caps (they use screw caps for some wines destined for the UK market).