Bulk Rosé at the Coop

La Roquière, the village wine coopA few summer impressions, a bit late because of the backlog of posts...
La Roquebrussanne, Var (Provence)
Coops are quietly evolving and it is wise to check regularly the wines there and go taste all the wines in a Cooperative from time to time. There are quite a few coopératives offering a range of pleasant wines at a very cheap price, and every wine region in France has these collective wineries. To remind what a Coopérative vinicole is, let's say it is a collective structure where growers bring their grapes and where the wine is made (usually grapes being vinified together by color) and commercialized. The growers are paid in proportion of their contribution. The prices are usually cheaper than in regular wineries, making them a favorite supplier for locals. Of course, the coopératives are more widespread in the south of France, where growers are federated in nearly every village. If coops are still reluctant to follow the outstanding Estezargues coop and its additives-free wines made from individually-cared vineyards, most have passed the messsage to the growers to begin to move from heavily-conventional farming to an "agriculture raisonnée" one. It is hard to give a clear definition to the "agriculture raisonnée" farming concept, let's say it means using as low as possible chemical dosages for sprayings (there's no one to check though) and letting some grass grow...
Provence and the South of France is really Coop country, you find a coop in every village and growers there still rely heavily on the coops to make and sell the product of their grapes, resulting often in excess production, low prices and low quality, and by way of consequence occasional unruly demonstrations which surprise the outside world (which isn't aware that disturbances, tire-burning and occasional ransacking are the norms in France for many interest groups to make themselves heard and receive more aid from the State).
In summer when you need large volumes of rosé for the apéritif of the end of the day, the coop is the right place to check. This post isn't intended to compare the coops, there are so many coops around in Provence, this could be the subject of a book.This particular coop may offer an illustration for other inner provence coopératives which have made progresses in terms of quality.

Fuel for the apéritif : the rosé on tapI needed a few liters of rosé for our daily consumption, and buying in bulk is a favorite mode of purchase here, even if I always buy bottles along too (the bottled wine is usually better than the bulk one). I usually buy here and there, in regular wineries too, as they sell also in bulk their rosé and their other wines. The trick is not to be locked on a particular winery or coop, because you need to buy dozens of liters for a typical summer sojourn, and the rosé landscape is changing every year, with suprises around the corner. The price factor is of course central for buying in bulk, the rosé costing typically barely over one Euro a liter in a coopérative viticole. It seems that from what I felt, people keep buying from the same place all the time, call it lack of curiosity or customer loyalty, and that's too bad because there is a wide range range of quality levels, even for this cheap booze.The vatroom of the CoopérativeThis particular coopérative is making wine from grapes grown around La Roquebrussanne, a village in the Var département. It is located roughly 25 kilometers from the coast, in a hilly region (most of the Var is hilly) of garrigue, woods and vineyards. Although many villages of inner Provence have seen a surge of new constructions, they are still very untouched compared with the coastline, and as you can see in the pictures below, there's a feel of quiet beauty under the unique Provencal light. I chose to go there because an acquaintance told us that this coop had won 9 medals for its 2008 wines and because the head of an outstanding small organicy-farmed estate (La Rose des Vents) located nearby was its enologist. Medals are not a starter for me, and there has been an inflation of medals lately that will make me keep cold on this subject. But the fact that the coop enlisted an enologist who was also an organic grower on his own estate was interesting.La Roquebrussanne : l'Auberge de la LoubeWhen we dropped at the coopérative's shop, there were several customers who brought like us some containers for the bulk wine. The outside temperature was very high in august and rosé was a good sell, you wouldn't think to drink red wine by this kind of heat, white maybe, but everybody seemed to choose pink. Provence whites are too often ignored and can make a good alternative to rosé but in this particular coop, the white in bulk was quite bad.
I was lazy and in order to not have to re-bottle later, I had brought four empty 1,5-liter plastic bottles for my rosé. The lady at the shop said that they don't accept to fill bottles usually (too long and spills too much wine I guess) but she accepted exceptionally as this was the first time she saw me as customer (I had already bought from this coop in the past though). The other people brought 10- or 20-liter containers, glass or plastic, and bottled probably it all once back home. The bulk section of the shop looked like a gas station with the pumps of the different qualities, not unleaded or diesel here, but red, rosé, white, either in AOC or Vin de Pays. The amazing thing is that a liter of rosé happened to cost exactly the same as unleaded gasoline these days in France : 1,2 Euro a liter. And we could add that the price of bottled water is very close, and even higher than that for certain brands...
The bibs that were displayed on the side of the shop seemed to be less popular than the pump wines that day. The reason may be that the price per liter is a bit higher : a 5-liter bib of white Vin de Pays cost 9,5 Euro, a 5-liter bib of red or rosé AOC Coteaux Varois cost 11,3 Euro, and a 10-liter of the same 20,5 Euro. By comparison, the Vin-de-Pays bulk wine (red, rosé or white) costs 1,2 Euro at the pump, and the AOC Coteaux Varois (red or rosé) costs 1,65 Euro per liter.A fountain in La RoquebrussanneWe also tasted the coop wines before buying as like elsewhere it is free of charge. What is interesting is that you can taste not only their bottled wines but also their bulk ones, and there is a difference even between samely-denominated wines, the bottle version being better. It can come from the selection of vats, and the bulk wine is probably made of the less promising vats.
__La Roquière (this is the name of the coop), Rosé, Vin de Pays du Var. Bottle. Cinsault, Grenache, Carignan, Cabernet and Syrah. Acceptable quality for this price bracquet (costs 2,5 Euro a bottle). Reasonably balanced and pleasant. 12,5°. Got a medal in the "Concours des soleils" fair in Brignoles (a small town of inner Var), well done for a coop Vin de Pays. Light wine, the one you can pour generously at the end of a hot summer day.
__La Roquière Cuvée du Laoucien, Rosé 2008, AOC Coteaux Varois en Provence (the recently-added "en Provence" is the new find of the Appellation administration to help promote the region wines). More powerful and aromatic wine. Feels higher in alcohol even though it reads 12,6° on the label. Will be more for a meal, you get to eat something with this wine. Gold medal in Paris in 2009. Costs 4,9 Euro a bottle.
__La Roquière, rosé in bulk, Vin de Pays. Less balanced than the bottle version, the mouth is less structured, definitely another wine, but the price tag is also different : 1,2 Euro a liter. We need volumes and I'll fill my plastic bottles with it.
__La Roquière, white Vin de Pays du Var. Quite awfull, flat watery mouth. Costs 2,5 Euro a bottle.
__There is another rosé that we didn't taste, it is labelled La Roquière, AOC Coteaux Varois en Provence and it won a silver medal in Paris (2009). It costs 3,6 Euro.This coop makes also three sparkling wines, two whites (a Brut and a Demi-Sec, both at 4,75 Euro) and a rosé named "Cuvée d'une Nuit" at 5,5 Euro. We bought a bottle and had it a few days later, it was so-so, and with big bubbles.A Galloroman sarcophagus set in a cement vatThis coop has another particularity : There's a skeleton of a young woman in a cement vat. Let me explain, they found accidentally an ancient tomb while making some ground work in front of the winery in 1997. Inside of a stone sarcophagus, experts found a skeleton thought to belong to a young woman, alongside a clay pot and a flask, the whole thing dating from the Gallo-Roman era, exactly from the 3rd century AC. After a lengthy analysis, the remains were given back to the winery which exposed them in a cement vat through which a door was opened. Just ask the lady at the shop, you can go see the remains and the sarcophagus, it's just 4 meters maybe from this room with the tasting counter and the bulk-wine taps. Intriguing, the cement vat itself makes you feel like in the midst of an Egyptian pyramide, that's an uncommon experience in a winery. This makes me think to another winery of Provence with the embalmed body of Sainte Roseline. Questions arise, like Who was this young woman exactly, what did she die from and how people's lives looked like then... very mysterious. The village has other Galloroman remains, and they happen to be located on the grounds of another winery a couple of kilometers from here : The Domaine de Loou unearthed these ancient ruins while conducting works on the ground near the facility. Here is a link to informations about the Galloroman villa and the tomb in La Roquebrussanne.a house in La RoquebrussanneThe coop, like other collective wineries across France, has worked recently to improve the quality of its wines, which is not easy when you have to change the farming practices on 3 or 4 hundred hectares of vineyards owned by some 56 growers. The central issue of course to make a good wine is the vineyard, the grape conditions and the yields, and that takes time to tackle. The enologist has to work with what is brought in at the harvest, and do his best. The coop has hired an independant enologist for this job : Gilles Baude, who owns the renowned La Rose des Vents, an estate which won applause for its neat wines, is the consultant enologist for the Coopérative. His opwn winery which he manages with his associate Thierry Josselin, is just a kilometer down the road from the village and the coop. If you're ready to spend more on wine (forget the wine pump...), that's where you might stop in the area because la Rose des Vents wines offer a lot for just a bit more money (I'll make a story about it).Vintage Jeep passing in front of the village schoolI had the opportunity to speak briefly to Gilles Baude (the harvest was nearing and he was quite busy) : he told me that in addition to his work at La Rose edes Vents, he was a consultant enologist for several wineries, including the coop nearby. This consultancy work included collecting the analysis data and the following of the vinifications. Asked about the difference between his own grapes and the ones of the coop, he says that there isn't significative difference. About the use of additives, he says that tartaric acid for example is not much used in the Var because the acidity in the region is pretty high. About arabic gum, an additive he uses occasionally for reds, he says that it is more a natural additive than a chemical product. As for an actual additive that he uses, there's the PVPP, which eliminates bitterness in red wines and prevents oxydation in whites and rosés
He considers that for the quality of the incoming grapes, a well-timed mechanical harvest can make a difference. In Provence, the temperatures are so high that only a mechanical harvest done in the wee hours of the early morning can allow the grapes to reach the winery at low temperatures. He says that this way, the grapes being in good shape, they can add much less SO2. Speaking of SO2, he uses (including at the coop) 50% to 60% less SO2 than the maximum authorized level : 100-120 g instead of 210. Today, he adds, the temperature control has become another formidable tool to lower the SO2 addings.
For the rosé, he says that it is difficult to work with wild yeasts because of the short contact with the skins, so he uses external yeasts. He says that people who pretend that they use wild yeast for the rosé often end up adding much more external yeasts at the end because the fermentations stall and they have to push it.The bulk rosé ready in the fridgeAt la Rose des Vents, his 30-hectare estate, he can work on the yields. Yields help lever on the final quality of the wines : for his own rosés, he has yields of 45-50 hectoliter/hectare in the vineyard so as to reach the right structure in the wine. For the reds, he will chooses yields like 35-40 ho/ha to get the right concentration.
The Coopérative has also begun to make sélections parcellaires, or wines from individual vineyards, opening the way for more individually cared vineyards and wines, and less mass-blendings of different plots. This is the case for the Rosé Domaine Teisseire 2008, a wine that is vinified at the coop and sold for 5,3 Euro a bottle.
Asked about his organic farming at la Rose des Vents, he says that the South and Provence gather ideal conditions for organic farming with its a dry and windy climate. The N°1 problem in terms of diseases here is Oïdium. Speaking of Esca, he considers that the cause of the disease may be the viticulture modes, the choice of variety for a given plot, and the dead wood that are not taken away from the vineyard.
Here are other prices for the bottled wine at this Coopérative :
Reds :
AOC Coteaux Varois la Roquière 2006 (Cab 10% Syrah 90%) : 3,5 Euro
AOC Coteaux Varois Cuvée du Laoucien 2006 (Cab 30% Syrah 70%), 4,60 Euro
Vin de Pays du Var (cab 30% Syrah 30% Grenache 40%), 2,5 Euro
Vin de Pays du Var, Cuvée San Bastian (aged in cask - Grenache 40%, Syrah 60%), 2,9 Euro

Rosés:
AOC Coteaux Varois La Roquière 2008 (Grenache 80%, Syrah 5%, Cinsault 10%, Rolle 5%), 3,6 Euro
AOC Coteaux Varois, Cuvée du Laoucien 2008 (Grenache 70%, Cinsault 10%, Syrah 15%, Rolle 5%), 4,9 Euro
Vin de Pays du Var, 2,5 Euro
Domaine Teiseire 2008, 5,3 Euro

Sparkling wines : 2 different whites (Brut & Demi-sec) at 4,75 Euro, and a pink bubbly at 5,5 Euro

Whites :
Vin de Pays du Var white, 2,5 Euro
Vin de Pays du Var, Rolle, 2,9 Euro

AOC-wine Bibs cost 11,3 Euro for 5 liters and 20,5 Euro for 10 liters. Vin-de-Pays bibs cost 9,5 Euro for 5 liters.

Bulk wine (the gravity pump) costs 1,2 Euro a liter for Vin-de-Pays wines (red, rosé or white), and 1,65 Euro/liter for AOC Appellation wines (red and rosé).

an evening in Provence : the apéritifServing a cool drink in Provence (in our matter, a rosé) is always a challenge. From the time our bulk-wine steps out of the fridge, its temperature is going up, even on cooler evening temperatures. For a more mundane presentation of this cheap rosé, we used occasionally a clay jug that we kept in the fridge, makes a better view than this plastic bottle. The iced jacket on the picture helped a bit for the temperature, but is not perfect, so we will make our best to down this bottle before it gets too warm...Link to the Roquière Coop info (and map)

Comments

[R Olson]

I wish the wineries here in Washington State had the business model of the French cooperatives and would sell their wines in bulk, saving the consumer and themselves the cost of bottling.

[Bertrand]

Maybe they sell so well in bottles (it's more profitable for them) that they don't need these bulk sales. While aware that the quality of these wines is usually lower than the one of the bottled wines (different vats), it's indeed a good thing that people with lower revenues can access to wine consumption. Bulk sales aren't really eating into bottle sales, there's room for both.