Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Wine News (6)

Now and then, a bottle of wine will bring the spirit of joy and happiness to your table. You just begin to sip and fly into the heavens of its mysterious alchemy. This was so obvious with this Nacarat from Claude Courtois (a Loire wine) that I thought I had to write a couple of words about it. We bought this basic-cuvée (made of Gamay plus Pinot Noir plus "something else", no SO2 added) wine when we visited the estate in may 2005 (the 18 months in our cellar may be important). Very lightly "perlant" (that's why B. wanted to carafe it), its color is clear-bright red with some milky turbidity. Full of delicate red fruits aromas, the mouth is pure suavity with every new sip a new wonder. We finished the bottle off that evening... Claude Gilois pouring the Monte Bello into B.'s glass

Lavinia, the huge Paris wine store, held a California wines tasting october 26th. 7 wines were proposed to Lavinia Club members. Most were reasonably priced on french standards (8,5 to 13,30 Euro). The first one that we tasted was amazingly aromatic: this Mc Manis Viognier 2005 (13,3 Euro) was a festival of aromas and flavours, including exotic fruits ones.
But the king of the evening was Ridge's Monte Bello 2000, proposed at 149 Euro that evening, and presented by importer Claude Gilois (Vins du Monde) as possibly the best wine of the world. Known as the winner of the 1976 Paris tasting (with its 1971 millesime), this wine has the complexity, refined texture, plenitude and length of an exceptional wine. New aromas keep coming minutes after minutes. Santa Cruz mountains, altitude 850m, not very far from the Pacific. A real terroir, Claude Gilois says.75% C.S., 23% Merlot, 2% C.F. 1998 was a bad year, but 90, 92, 94, 96, 97 were top millesimes. Look at the smiles and controlled impatience of some among the two dozens (or more) who waited for their pour (click on right)...

Revolutionary wine marketing...

Marketing strategy has accustomed us to funny names like Yellow Tail, or Red Bicyclette. In France, the wine-store chain Nicolas (owned by french Castel group, like Oddbins in the UK) seem to have capitalized on the leftist mythology for one of its foreign imports: Che, San Juan, Argentina Syrah 2004 is a cheap argentina wine (4,5 Euro) sold exclusively at Nicolas and Oddbins. The label looks like a revolutionary flag. The fine print does not say if the Argentina-born icon of the militant left was a wine lover. The wine itself seems surprisingly well done for its price range (take out the 20% VAT, the store's margin and the transport fee, how much did they pay in Argentina for it??). Quite supple, refined tannins. Pleasant wine. Trouble ahead for the cheap french wines...

Paris Wine Bars : Au Rêve

Pierre pouring a Bourgeuil Domaine des Mailloches 2004

If you're looking for a wine bar in Montmartre that has barely changed since the 1950's, try the "Bar Au Rêve". The venue is out of the beaten path and its patrons come from a wide range of social milieus depending of the hour, from people who live next door, shop owners, passerbys to professionals working in the area, artists and students.
You can check that nothing here has changed for years when you look at the black and white picture on the wall behind the bar, which features owners Elyette and Pierre posing for Beaujolais nouveau in 1968...same people in the same place. Prices of the wines were a little cheaper then, at least nominally (maybe not in inflation-adjusted terms), as I could read on the upper-left corner of the pic : 0,60 to 0,70 Franc per glass (9 to 11 cents)...

The bar in the wee hours of the morning. 2 rosés for Marina and friend

The bar is open very late, till 2 am, which was common for bars in Paris 50 years ago or more. Security problems as well as restrictive work laws have forced many bars and cafés to close much earlier, but here, the owners tend the bar themselves and this part of Montmartre is quiet like a village.
The first time I went into this bar, it was indeed very late at night, even beyond closing time : I had been shooting pictures of after-hours Paris for Ken, who was preparing a book on the subject, and we were cruising the neighbourhood on my motorcycle when we saw this island of life in the middle of the night, and decided to stop there.

Marina (left) and her friend at the next table. This was later than 2 am...

Marina was sitting at the next table with a friend and we engaged the conversation. Both are comedians on stage in the area and were quite festive that evening. They had glasses of rosé and we ordered both a glass of Jacky Preys Sauvignon. Time went by and we were still ordering more wine even if it was now well beyong closing time. Eylette was so good, she was alone to handle the bar and she did not even push us out, I think we left at 3 am or something like that.

Thomery Vines on Walls

A view on a few vineyard-walls of Thomery (pictured last winter). You can see 3 leaf-less vines on this wall

This story is about vines trained against walls, and Chasselas table grape.
One of things people rarely know is that the Paris region was the #1 wine region in France before the Phylloxera era.
Another little-known story is the vines-against-walls that were grown intensively in Thomery since the 18th century. This village, which lies along the winding Seine river, 75 km east of Paris near the royal city of Fontainebleau, had found a way to supply Paris with high-quality Chasselas grapes in the middle of winter, and this, for more than 200 years.... See this aerial view on the right and try to visualize how the tightly-packed alignments of walls looked like without the houses, most of them having been built recently. By 1835 already, Loudon's "Encyclopedia of Gardening" referred to Thomery's Chasselas and to its peculiar training system. Read this page [word] from his book (thomery is evoked in the second half of the text).
We know that Thomery's wine was a favorite of the king François 1st in the first half of the 16th century. That's why his winery ("les Pressoirs du Roy") was built here. Then, later, in 1730, after table-grape vines from the southern city of Cahors were planted and trained against a 1200 meter-long wall on the Fontainebleau Chateau's grounds, someone named Francois Charmeux, after noticing the excellent ripening effect of this walled training system, began to build parallel walls in nearby Thomery and to plant vines against them. The idea was to grow high quality Chasselas grapes and sell them in Paris, a night boat-ride from there, then.

IGN aerial picture of Thomery (detail). Walls are typically 9 meters from each other. Most of the houses here were built recentlyIt worked so well that 350 km of walls were built in this small village, on the slope going down to the Seine. These parallel walls were erected 8 to 10 meters from each other, oriented so as to make the best profit of the exposition, vines being planted along one side only. The high volume of grapes made people look for ways to preserve the grapes and sell them later than at harvest time (the harvest market was saturated and prices dropped). Soon Rose Charmeux invented an odd way to keep the grapes till Christmas and even beyond : individual clusters would be placed at the top of as many small bottles of water in dark fruit-rooms to reach Christmas unscathed. Some sulphur would be occasionally burnt in the rooms to kill-off infections and paper bags would be disposed on the grapes to further protect them. At a time when there was no air-conditioning system and no possibility to fly cargo from the southern hemisphere, this allowed to sell the renowned Chasselas of Thomery continuously and on-demand till Christmas. This was revolutionary by these times' standards...Typical Thomery wall (vines on the right), with vegetables or fruit trees growing inbetween the wallsThe high density of walls allowed an even better ripening, with the walls keeping and reverbating the heat during the night. As you see on the picture, the walls were roofed, the vine-side of the roof being wider to protect the grapes against extreme heat and rain. The grapes were protected by individual paper bags on the vine too, to prevent microbial infection, or to ward off insects like this hornet (pictured in Thomery too) on the right. Light filtering panels would also widen the roof for a better protection. You can see some of them (in shambles) on the right of the picture.