Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Open doors in a Loire winery

Buzzing tasting table Fougères sur Bièvre, Loire
There's a format for wine tastings and mini wine fairs that is on the rise in France, and it's perfect for me because that's my type of event, informal, casual and just the right size so that you don't feel like you go to work when you push the door : you're here to enjoy your day, have good wine and chat with nice people, not to race along long lines of immaculate tables, scribbling incomprehensible (even for yourself) notes in-between, racing to meet your numbers. These new types of tasting are held by a given winery which invites in the way a few friend-wineries, say, from 5 to 12 in general, so that you can taste the wines of a given small group of wineries in a single location. Considering that these vignerons are more on the artisan side than on a business-centered mindset, this shared mode allows them both to split the costs and to have time to meet the other participating vintners with whom, you may guess, they share the same passion for real wines. France's economic prospects may have taken a somber turn recently, at least we'll still have these wine gatherings to heat up the mood. There are really plenty of these small artisan-wine tastings all over France, from the Jura to the Languedoc and from Anjou to Auvergne in the Loire, and if not for the distance and costs (and weather conditions when you ride a motorbike), I'd visit more of them if I could because you don't just technically taste wines there, you live a very nice experience. Such shared tastings usually last a couple of days, you can buy wine from each participating vigneron (it's one of the main goal : selling wine directly to customers), and you have entertainment of some sort, music, street performers of some kind or other artists taking part. This particular Open Doors took place at Les Vins Contés just outside the village of Fougères-sur-Bièvre, which is located in the Loire in western Sologne, a large forested area south of Orléans and Blois. Fougères is also home to a beautiful little-known medieval castle (pic on right).

Causse Marines (Sud Ouest)

Soon back... Virginie Maignien in the vineyard Vieux, Tarn département (earlier this year)
The Causse Marines winery is located in the Tarn département, in the Marcillac/Gaillac area in the north-eastern tip of the South-West (Sud Ouest) Appellaton region (the dark-green patch north-west from Rodez). It is maybe 5 kilometers away from another outstanding winery, Domaine Plageoles, the two of them being largely credited for having improved the status and viticultural practices of a small region which is the oldest recorded wine region in France. As you may know, one of the challenges for this old wine region was also to reintroduce indigenous grape varieties which had been replaced in the 20th century by standard varieties of the Bordeaux region, in the belief that the region had to adapt to what was supposed to be the preference of the average consumer for well-known blends. I met Virginie on a couple occasions, including on a barge tasting along the Seine in Paris (scroll down the linked page) where I had a very nice 12-year-old veil wine. Going through the region again briefly a few weeks ago, I had the chance to visit the wine farm at last and taste a few wines.
The winery was started by Patrice Lescarret in 1993, he bought it from a retiring farmer who also grew other crops and who was until then selling all his grapes to the local Coop. The name of the estate comes from the plateau on which the farm and vineyards sit, causse being a French word from the Languedoc for arid plateau, and the other part of the name (Marines) coming from the small stream which runs through the area. Patrice Lescarret studied enology in Bordeaux and he jokes that after learning the wrong way in the school and being paid for a few years to apply this conventional winemaking in other wineries, he now tries to vinify the right way. Patrice and Virginie do all the work by thelselves, taking vacations separately so as there's always one of them in the winery and to overlook the vineyard. The wine farm is located a handful of kilometers from the small village of Vieux (pictured on left), in a setting which is just so beautiful, with no major road in view, it's in the middle of a hilly region with lots of woods, prairies and winding side roads with little traffic. The suburban sprawl hasn't yet touched the villages around, unlike what you see in Provence or near Avignon, and the whole region is a wonder at every turn, like when we saw the fortified village of Bruniquel overlooking the Vère river and canyon (picture on right) on our way back to Paris.

Clos des Grillons (Rhone)

Nicolas Renaud pouring Rochefort su Gard (Rhone)
In this part of the southern Rhone you feel like in Provence, with the same white stone surfacing, same aromatic bushes and plants, and rocky hills that would be easily mistaken for being somewhere in the Var département. But we're a handful of kilometers southwest of Tavel and west of Avignon. Right before you reach Rochefort driving from Tavel, you pass a church on your right overlooking the region (pic on right - satellite view) with calvary procession shrines all along the way to the top. This is a pilgrimage place which was founded by Charlemagne in 798 A.D. (History page in French, written 1910)
This visit at Nicolas Renaud in the southern Rhone is among my backlog of still unpublished visits I made earlier this year before going to Japan. While my intention was clearly to publish the story later, the sight of Nicolas Renaud's bottles at an excellent wine/sake shop in Fushimi, Kyoto (story here), was a good reminder on my path that I hadn't finished my job.
Nicolas Renaud is a young vigneron I heard about through Eric Pfifferling (Domaine de L'Anglore), the two are almost neigbors and have been working along a similar winemaking philosophy. Nicolas's estate Clos des Grillons had its start in 2008. For the anecdote, Nicolas Renaud was teaching history and geography before that, he had no vineyards of his own when he quit the teaching sector in 2005. At that time he went to work for 2 years at the Vieille Julienne in Chateauneuf du Pape, both in the vineyards and in the cellar, to better the knowledge that he had already accumulated by meeting winemakers and vignerons. All the while, he took his first vineyards en fermage (rents) in 2006, in Rochefort and also near Saze. Typically, he would prune 8 or 9 hours at la Vielle Julienne and then do it again on his own vines in the evening.

Wine News (47)

A happy wine A table wine I'd like to see on my table more often
That's the type of wine you're happy to come across, with a lovely fruitiness (plus the pepper side of Pineau d'Aunis) and an onctuous, chewy mouthfell providing a relishing pleasure when you swallow it. If you plan to have a bottle with more than two people, you better plan ahead with a spare bottle because there will be soon a feeling of deprivation among your guests.
This lightly-turbid table-wine cuvée which is named Poivre et Sel [Pepper & Salt] is a Pineau d'Aunis with a bit of Gamay, it was made in 2011 in the Loire by Olivier Lemasson. It's a carbonic maceration made the most natural way from organicly-farmed grapes. It is not only made without additives, but without SO2 either, and with 11,5 ° in alcohol, the wine is such an easy, enjoyable drink. Costs 10-12 € in wine shops and 8 € at the winery.

Wine News (46)

Yaki-Imo truck in the middle of Tokyo I think it was the second day we were in Tokyo, as we arrived in the evening near our friends place in Nippori, I heard the unmistakable song of the Yaki-Imo mobile unit selling the traditional grilled sweet potatoes in the street. What you see here is the modern version of an utmost-Japanese street vendor, and like I wrote it before, this trade is almost as old as the Japanese cities. As Japan is not living under the tyranny of norms, no Yaki-Imo truck looks the same, and actually there are still a few cycle or walk carts like there were in, say, the 1940s'. 70 years ago or more, a man or a woman would push a cart with a stove and sing at the same time a strange song saying in substance "come and buy my yaki imo" (means steamy hot), and just by hearing this plaintive litany, people would walk out of their house or business and by a couple of these hot sweet potatoes right from the wood stove on the cart. Nowadays although in declining numbers, you still come across these Yaki Imo vendors in the big cities, although more in their shitamachi part (old-style neighborhood), just that they work out of a small truck now, but still with a stove and a real fire, and the sweet potatoe is just as good.
We saw this Yaki Imo in the same area but days later, but here the woman operating it hadn't put her music/song on (it's on tape nowadays). Our friend tried to convince her to put it on without telling her that I wanted to record it (I lost the file I made 4 years ago in Katsura, Kyoto), but for some reason she was reluctant, if I remember because her stuff was almost sold out.
See this page on Yaki Imo, there's a video where you can see an actual Yaki Imo van doing its business.

A Secret Sake Restaurant in Tokyo

Sanemura-san (right) with Rie Itoh Somewhere in Tokyo
Thanks to Yoshi whom we met with his girlfriend Erika at the Daitoryo izakaya near Okachimachi, we went to the most minimalist restaurant of Tokyo you can think of, and this was a wonderful experience. This is a very different world from the popular down-to-earth tachinomya and other casual izakaya. This type of almost-secret restaurant is everything-Tokyo too, a city where gastronomy reigns unchallenged under all forms.
The owner of the venue is also the cook there, and he has been scouring the world through his travels, taking recipes and sourcing rare artisanal products in the way. His restaurant is the ultimate result of this search for perfection.
Sake is on the front seat at Cotyuu, with artisan-type of sake often made with the no-additives kimoto sakemaking process. At Cotyuu, you find the different cuvées of 5 distinct sake breweries which have been selected by the Maître des lieux, and given the way he sources his ingredients in the kitchen, I'm pretty confident about any sake you can find here.
To find the restaurant, you must know the exact address, there is no way to guess it when you pass the modern building along this boulevard in central Tokyo. Once in the place, you find yourself at one end of a long room with a wall on the right and a long table on the left, the kitchen being behind the sliding door on the side.
As the restaurant owners prefer the word of mouth to find their customers, I'll not display the address, but if you look hard, you should find it.

Kenbishi Shuzo, Kobe (Japan)

Mr Masataka Shirakasi, stirring the fermenting rice (moromi) Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture (Japan)
We know that water counts a lot in the style and quality of sake, and here in the sake region of Nada near Kobe, the water quality and minerality is very different from the ones found in the rest of Japan. Nada is like Fushimi a highly regarded sake region, and also one of the biggest, but precisely because of the water, the sake amateurs will either be hooked up to the sake of Fushimi or at the opposite to the sake of Kobe, because the sake expression is so different between these two places that you're obliged to prefer one of them.

Kobe is the second port of japan, and it sits very close to the beautiful Rokko mountain range that you can see from the train (picture on left) and from which the water tables feed off. Starting from Kyoto to reach Mikage near Kobe where the brewery is located, you first take a Hikari Shinkansen to Osaka, then change for a slower Hankyu-line train to Okamoto, passing Kobe in the way, and change again for one stop to Mikage, which is located maybe 5 or 7 kilometers east of Kobe. In Kobe, through which we drove on our way back, you don't see any trace of the big Kobe earthquake of 1995, and the huge Hanshin expressway of which whole sections collapsed has been built anew (picture on right).
The Kenbishi sake brewery is active since 1505, making it the 3rd oldest brewery in Japan. The iconic kanji sign of Kenbishi has been in use since the origin of the brewery, here in Kobe. This is in this regard the oldest brand of sake, the two other having changed their name since they were founded. The simple and elegant logo on the bottles displays both the symbols of man (above) and woman (below) in it, to represent the harmony between their forces. The brewery changed hands 90 years ago, and the Shirakashi family took the reins then. Our host for this visit, Mr Masataka Shirakasi is the heir of this family. The brewery has been sitting in this area of Nada since 50 years.

Saito Shuzo Sake Brewery (Kyoto, Japan)

Mr Fujimoto, showing a fermenter Fushimi, Kyoto Prefecture (Japan)
There are several distinct sake regions in Japan, and Kyoto is one of them. Most of the wineries of the area are located in the Fushimi sector, and actually Fushimi is said to produce some of the best sake of Japan thanks to a long tradition and excellent water quality. On the small surface of 2 square kilometers around here, there are 25 sake breweries (there were 41 breweries 40 years ago), and this southern district of Kyoto has made the whole region shine in the eyes of sake lovers. The Saito Shuzo brewery sits in this small town of Fushimi, on the outskirts of Kyoto, and it is now part of the wider Kyoto area. Fushimi has been in the past on a strategic road where all sort of goods would pass through, including rice. The area had also a very fine-quality spring water named Fusui and that was enough, along with an important population living nearby to motivate the setting up of sake breweries.
Like other quality sake breweries, Saito Shuzo closes down during summer and the larger hot season, so all the work is done mostly in winter and early spring. Thanks to our friend Ayumi from Kyoto, we could visit the Saito Shuzo brewery, and the three of us walked from the Fushimi train station to the brewery (pictured on right).
We were offered to wait in a comfortable guest room, and after a while a discreet man came with three cups of tea and he left us for a couple of minutes. When he returned accompanied by another man to begin the interview, we discovered that this man was no less than the president of the brewery and the family heir of this old brewery. This is Japan, where humility and etiquette go on pair with excellence...
During several minutes, Saito-san explained to us how the brewery was founded, giving key dates and turning points in the long history of Saito Shuzo.
Picture on left : Mr Toru Saito, president, sitting on the right, with Mr Fujimoto (general director) at his side.

François Dumas, Wine Importer in Japan

François Dumas Roppongi, Tokyo
We had the chance recently to meet François Dumas, who is possibly the first to have set up a wine-import business in Japan centered around French natural wines : his company Le Vin Nature is entirely centered on the distribution of (mostly French) natural wines. His story is passionating because more than business, his career is about passion and intuition moves. First, he is a trained architect in France, then he organized music shows in Japan and ended up setting up a wine import business...
François came to Japan first 1979, he was a trained architect and he came for a one-year study on traditional Japanese houses, from the far north to the Japanese south. Back in France in 1981 he worked for the newly independant radio network Radio Nova, this was the time the World-Music was very strong in France and the new freedom in the radio waves was very exciting. Then he went back to Japan and organized music shows there with African musicians as well as people like Gainsbourg, Charles Trenet, Jane Birkin, Marianne Faithful, Maceo Parker and others. Serge Gainsbourg was not known in Japan then and he has become sort of a cult singer since. When the techno-music era began, he decided to stop this job, leave the business to his associates and begin do something with wine, even though he remained the president of this concert business (Highlife international) until 2006. So, in 1997, he decided to explore another field and gather a list of organic and biodynamic wineries and import their wines here. There weren't any specialized import of natural wines here then, the wine lansdcape was almost limited to Bordeaux which he felt was boring. From the start he had the wines of Overnoy, Chateau Le Puy (before it turned organic and discovered how not to use SO2, he adds) and many others.

Tokyo Wine Bar : Shonzui

Shige and Tsubo at Shonzui Roppongi, Tokyo
Here is a very cool wine bar/restaurant in Tokyo : Shonzui. It's located in Roppongi, but it's almost like if it was another Roppongi than the one we usually think to. Far from being in the buzzing neighborhood favored by foreign expats, it's on a side alley in the periphery of Roppongi which has a flavor of authenticity. The street where it sits looks very quiet and to add one more touch of remoteness, the bar is located on the 2nd story of a modern building (the white building on the left), without any hint on the street level other than a discreet sign (see on right). I'm always amazed in Japan at how bars and restaurants sitting away from the street level and from the public eye, sometimes in the upper stories of anonymous and bland buildings, can still find their clients to the point that they are packed. Here there was only a flight of stairs to climb but for the unsuspecting passerby it's just the same, If you hadn't heard about this place before, there's little chance you walk up and push the door...
This outstanding wine bar/restaurant offers a wide range of French natural wines, for which the Japanese consumers have developped a taste along the last years. Let's remind that Japan alone buys a huge share of the natural-wine production, most of which originating from France. For reasons ranging from a better pairing with their food, their love for raw, unprocessed products, taste trends bending more on lightness rather than aromatic bombs, and what could be a physical intolerance for the many additives used in the commercial winemaking (first and foremost SO2), the Japanese have been among the pioneers to plebiscite the nascent natural-wine movement. This resulted into the fact that Japan was almost from the start the first most important buyer of French natural wines. More than anywhere else, I think that the Japanese chose these wines because like their food, these wines were all about freshness and liveness, having had the least possible human intervention and at least no interference with any of the correcting tools and miracle powders used by the mainstream wineries.
Tokyo lovers will be happy to listen to my now-ritual microtrack recording of the audio ambiance along the Yamanote line...