Vendangeur Masqué or “masked harvester” is the label for de Moor wines from sourced fruit; the wines are made in the de Moor cellar in Courgis in the same manner as their estate wines. The Vendangeur Masqué Chablis comes from 2 clay-limestone parcels totaling 1.1 hectares of Chardonnay (inlcuding a bit of the very aromatic Musqué sub-variety). One is a rented parcel and was planted in 1980, faces west and is in conversion to organics; the other, previously rented but now owned by the de Moors, was planted in 2005, faces south and is fully organic. The fruit is harvested by hand, destemmed, gently pressed and fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in tank. The wine goes through malo and is aged on its lees without bâtonnage or racking in a mix of enameled-lined steel tanks and used barrels for close to a year. Bottling is without fining or filtering and is the only point at which a touch of sulfur is added to the wine.

Alice and Olivier de Moor live and work in Courgis, a small village 7km southwest of Chablis. It is where Olivier grew up, and his “old” cellar, the part where he ages his Chablis in oak barrels, is underneath his grandparents’ house. From the hill where Courgis sits, the view is of vineyards over hills all the way to the Chablis Grands Crus.

Olivier says the landscape has changed a lot in his lifetime, that all the woods, bushes and fallow land that dotted the hills have disappeared in favor of vines.

Alice is from the Jura, and the two met at a large Chablis estate where Olivier was in charge of the vineyards. Both are enologists, graduates of the Dijon enological school, with enough knowledge to take a radically different direction for their vines and wines than their neighbors. While the division of labor principally consists of Olivier in the vines and Alice in the cellar and office, both are equally omnipresent in every role and all decisions are made together.

They began their estate by planting three plots of Chablis-Bel-Air, Clardy and Rosette-in 1989. Of their first harvest in 1994, they kept only 15HL and sold off the rest. They were still employed elsewhere, but quit that fall after leasing their Saint-Bris vines: 0.55HA of planted in 1902 and 0.40HA of Sauvignon Blanc planted in 1950. For the next three years, they worked their four hectares of vines while tending the vines of other winemakers to make a living. In 1996, they planted a large plot in Chitry (the parcel is called "Champagne") with Aligoté and Chardonnay.

The whole Chablis area is highly calcareous, with soils formed millions of years ago in a warm, shallow sea. The limestone here is rich in shellfish fossils, including oysters (exogyra virgula), urchins, bivalves and ammonites. There are three estate bottlings of Chablis: "L'Humeur du Temps", "Rosette" and "Bel-Air & Clardy", the last a blend of the two plots.

Some other wines also join the fold through the De Moor's négociant project Les Vendangeurs Masqués ("The Masked Harvester"). A Bourgogne Blanc is produced from sourced organic fruit that varies every vintage and is not produced each year. A Chablis from organic fruit is produced annually. A suprisingly charming Viogner called "Caravan" has made numerous appearances, this time sourced from Gérald Oustric in the the Ardèche. And in very bad years (the reason they began buying fruit in the first place), they have sourced grapes from friends all over the South of France; a truly all-star list including Eric Pfifferling, Domaine Gramenon, Eric Texier and Émile Hérédia.