Abbaye de Lérins (Provence)

Walking to the Abbey's winery facility Lérins Abbey, St Honorat Island (French Riviera)
It may not be a coincidence that the monks of the Abbaye de Lérins (Lérins Abbey) on an island off Cannes are cistercian. The cistercian monks have played a leading role in France throughout History in the extension of vineyards and in the understanding of winemaking and also of the alchemy between varieties and terroirs. The small island of Saint Honorat is sitting a couple of miles away from Cannes right near another - slightly larger - island named Ile Sainte Marguerite. It is a haven of peace light-years away from the superficial pleasures of the French Riviera city, and so small that you can walk around it in a very short time.
Here on the island, the first monks of the christian era set up a community, following an early Christian ermit named Honorat (born circa 380 A.D.) who settled here to pray. The monastery was created somewhere near 400 A.D. (between 400 and 410 to be precise), and the 5th and 6th century is considered to have been the golden age for this magnet of meditation island, not only for the number of its monks but also the outstanding individuals who joined then (Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland is said to have studied there in the 5th century). Anyway, the Abbey of Lérins has been very influential for centuries among the religious people and the elite throughout Provence, but what brings us this story today is that the Abbey of Lérins is happening to grow vines and make a few outstanding wines....

The picture on the right was shot from the island of Saint Honorat with the island of Sainte Marguerite a short distance beyond the sailboat, and the continent in the far (the mountains).

Frère Marie-Pâques tasting in the cellar Frère Marie-Pâques is one of the 21 monks who live permanently at Saint Honorat, he is 53 and has been in this monastic community for 26 years now. He is also the bursar of Lérina Sarl, the commercial wing of the community which sells liqueurs and wines to the outside world. Brother Marie-Pâques says that it is thought that there has been vineyards here virtually since the beginning, if only for the mass-wine needs of the monastery, and documents from the Middle Ages name the small harbor of the island port de la vigne (vineyards harbor). Also, later, other documents show that the monks at one point complained to authorities that the soldiers staying on the island to protect it from the Sarrazins cut some of the vines in the middle of winter for heating purposes (there were no trees on the island at that time, just vines), thus depriving the monastery of their precious (and pious) wine source...
Today, the vineyard surface of the island monestary reaches 8 hectares. Back in 1975 there were more vineyards, then some of them were replaced by lavander fields around 1985 until the monestary started to make quality wines in 1992 with the help of people like Chef Jacques Chibois who worked at Hotel Gray d'Albion then. From then on, they planted and restructured the vineyard, producing white wines first and the first reds (with Syrah) in 1996. From 2000 they concentrated their efforts to produce high-tier wines. The abbey of Lérins, vineyard in the foreground Brother Marie-Pâques insists that at Lérins they want to achieve the best quality wines on pair with the very best estates because they have a real terroir with limestone undersoil coupled with a geological particularity, vertical faults through which the roots can go deep between the strats to find their mineral nutrients. To explain my interest in this visit, I must say that I tasted several wines of the Abbaye de Lérins at the Grand Tasting in Paris last december and that this was a stunning experience. I was then particularly impressed by their Cuvée Saint Honorat, a Vin de Pays de la Méditerranée made of Syrah and a bit of Mourvèdre (vintage 2007) and priced 32 €. The second wine that made my day then was their Cuvée Saint Salonius, a 2007 Pinot Noir labelled as Vin de Pays de la Méditerranée with an incredible mouthfeel but priced 190 € a bottle. They made only 1000 bottles of this cuvée and this wine was so nice that I somehow understand that their must be a price for rarity. Other vineyards What impressed me the most was this freshness in the wine : here we are in a supposedly hot climate where you would hardly think of growing and vinifying successfully Pinot Noir, but on certain terroirs Pinot Noir can also reach the sky outside Burgundy, like for example the ones of Alsace. Brother Marie-Pâques is certain that there is a unique terroir here under these vines to explain this striking freshness and minerality. And the feedback from the tastings of their wines is very positive, be it for the Chardonnay, the Syrah which feels at home here, or the Mourvèdre which made people jolt out of their tasting sleepyness (I hadn't tasted it when B. and I began this visit). But Brother Marie-Pâques says Barmès-Buecher in that people are ultimately astounded by the Pinot Noir that they don't expect to come across in this southern climate. The Pinot Noir vines are very young. They got the help of Jean Lenoir (creator of The Nose of Wine) who brought Eric Verdier and a few others in the adventure, all of them helping shape the winery and the style of the wines. Now, Frère Marie-Pâques says, they are on their own with the regular help of Jean-Michel Novelle, a vigneron and winemaker from Switzerland who is both an artist and a technician.
When they restructured the vineyard, there was some Carignan, Clairette, Ugni Blanc, Cinsault & Grenache. They uprooted the two latter, beginning for their first cuvées with Clairette and Ugni Blanc, but they ended with uprooting the Ugni and replanting Chardonnay. They saw that they could make wine here without being hostage of the Provence rules, because the climate and the terroir allows it. At the beginning they also used some Alicante with which they made their first Cuvée Saint Sauveur, but they discontinued this variety. They planted then a majority of Syrah and then the Mourvèdre, ending with some Pinot Noir, although for this last planting people told them that they were crazy. The vineyards are otherwise intermingled with woods, fruit trees and eucalyptus trees (pic on right).
To see how the vineyards are stretched along the small island, look at this satellite image and zoom in. Workers in the vineyard For the vineyard tasks, the abbey employs two permanent workers who commute evey day from the continent, using the same boat (see timetable) which connects several times a day Cannes to the island of Saint Honorat. The trip takes maybe 10 or 15 minutes, there's a beautiful view on the bay of Cannes in the way, and it brings mostly people who look for the quietness of the island and its pristine shores for a walk. The abbey grounds, albeit not fenced (there are just a few signs reading in French "access reserved to the monks"), are off limits to outsiders but every now and then like when we walked around the property with Frère Marie-Pâques and commercial representative Samuel Bouton, you come across trespassers who want to see the vineyards from close. The monks do some work in addition to their religious and meditation duties but there's already lots of work to keep the monestary going, and the only time they really put their weight in the vineyard/winery side is at harvest : Brother Marie-Pâques says that everyone knows that having pickers ready at the right day chosen for the harvest is crucial, and on the secular wineries of the continent, vignerons are obliged to reserve a relatively long time in advance because the pickers have to split efficiently their schedules among several wineries. This is where the monks-pickers have a decisive edge, because for high-quality wines, the harvest needs to be decided sometimes at the last minute for maturity reasons, something which is possible here as the 21 monks don't have any other vineyards to pick but their own, and they will (reluctantly of course...) set aside the service of God for some more trivial tasks... The vat room at the Abbey of Lérins The idea to grow Pinot Noir here at Saint Honorat came from Jean Lenoir who in spite of the adage that says There's no good Pinot Noir outside of Burgundy understood that there was here a valuable terroir and climate conditions for this variety. The first plantation was made in 2003 and the first vintage took place in 2005, with Jacques Chibois and the Japanese clients wanting to buy all the cuvée. The Japanese came very early after the rebirth of the abbey estate : Vinos Yamùazaki, which is based in the city of Shizuoka (Shizuoka Prefecture, south-west of Tokyo) and operates wineshops across Japan, has been now buying the wines of the Abbaye de Lérins for 17 years now. The Clos de la Charité, planted with young Mourvèdre The first vineyard we went to was this humble-looking young vineyard behind that wall. This Clos was where in the past the monks were growing their vegetables as the monastery was almost entirely self-sustainable in an era with scarce connections with the continent. The vines in this Clos are Mourvèdre, and after having tasted in the cellar the wine from other Mourvèdre plots of the island, we'll look at these young vines with another interest as they will in the future reinforce the existing Mourvèdre surface on Saint Honorat.
There's a point in the conversation when brother Marie-Pâques explains that in the search for excellency and quality at Lérins, there is something more important that the monks want to say to the world : they want to emphasize the importance of peace, justice, fraternity and togetherness with commitment on economic development. They want the "brand" of Lérins to carry this message and values, and they do it on every opportunity like when they travelled recently to Hong Kong which is their gateway to mainland China. They'll do it soon (in may) also in Russia, where they will present their wines to a private event of wealthy wine amateurs. Because the wines of the Abbaye de Lérins are upper-tier and quite expensive, they target the niche market that can afford them, but this is a way too to convey their message among people with influence on society.
The Clos de la Charité plays a central role in the humanitarian actions of the abbey : each vine can be auctionned by generous donors and at the end, it yields enough money to fuel several NGOs (see short article here about the subject-in French). They donated already some 100 000 € through this Clos de la Charité, and there are still many vines to auction in there. Part of the cask cellar The monks spend 5 hours a day for communal work like the laundry, the kitchen and cleaning, but also to staff the accomodation section, as the abbey receives visitors who want to spend time in a prayer and meditation retreat. They also staff the shop where day visitors can buy the wines and liqueurs made by the abbey, and they are in charge of the bottling, labelling and orders preparation. So the monks don't work much in the vineyard except for the harvest.
Speaking of the Appellation status, the geographical location of the island gives a humble labelling to the abbey wines, even though their quality largely surpasses this handicap in our opinion : the wines here are either Vin de Pays des Alpes Maritimes or IGP de Méditerranée. Frère Marie-Pâques says that they disregard this side aspect and consider their growing and winemaking jobs like an artisan or an artist conceives his work of Art, with the pleasure of the end consumer as a better goal than a mere Appellation on the label.
Speaking of the yields, brother Marie-Pâques says that the undersoil and nature of the terroir here allow generous yields, like 50 hectoliters/hectare without jeopardizing the quality of the wine. He often asks to the professional tasters in which bracket they think their upper-cuvées wines were picked, and the answer is often something like 17 to 22 ho/ha because they taste like tightly-reined-in yields. On the wholen, their yields here are between 35 and 53 hectoliters/hectare. Samuel Bouton taking wine from a cask All the grapes are destemmed after the hand harvest, and they use a pneumatic press for the red and the white. Speaking about the vat room and its tanks, Samuel Bouton says that there must be something with the saline nature of the air here because the stainless-steel vats pictured somewhere above tend to rust here and there in spite of the nature of the metal and of the hygiene standard of the chai. Thanks to the rigorous hyegiene, they don't have brettanomyces which are sometimes tough to get rid of, but in case they have a doubt, they bought a VectoClean unit, a system designed by a company in Beaune, Burgundy to purify the containers from germs.
The casks here are all from Taransaud, Samuel Bouton says that the reason is regularity in the quality of the fine-grain, mild-toasted wood, which comes from the much sought-after Tronçais forest. Brother Marie-Pâques having his glass filled __Clairette 2010 (the first wine that we taste), a white, from a cask. This will be a part of the Cuvée Saint Pierre which is a blend of 80 % Clairette and 80 % Chardonnay. What we taste is 100 Clairette (not blended yet, still in casks). The wine begins to ferment in vats and then goes into casks where the fermentation continues. There's some stirring of the lees, and the malolactic fermentation is sometimes made, sometimes not, depends of the cuvée and the way it tastes, its richness and so on. The wine has a saline side that SamuelBouton says is a signature of the island of Saint Honorat along with the freshness in the whites. Nice wine.
__ Chardonnay 2010. A bit turbid. More opulent wine on the nose, more freshness in this wine with aromas of white flowers, some wheat says B., a bit of wood also but discreet. I ask about the alcohol level which I think could be high although the freshness doesn't make it look so. Samuel Bouton asks us to guess, I hesitate between 13,5 ° and 14 ° because I think that the freshness could make me underestimate the alcohol, and he says that it is actually 14,5° and 15°. Not bad for this level... The substance in the wine compensates largely this alcohol. Frère Marie-Pâques joins us at this stage (he had left us for an urgent task) and tastes the wine. He says that he smells the lees, the wine having been stirred not long ago. The wine is at the beginning of its élevage time.
Speaking of the yearly rain pours, he says that the average is between 300 and 400 milimeters a year but in 2009 they got between 800 and 1000 milimeters depending of the part of the island. This happened to be profitable for the whites, he says. Pouring the Clairette The ones who taste the grapes and decide when it's ripe and ready for harvest are frère Marie-Pâques and Alain Vallès, the vineyard manager. and when the green light is given, the monks can go pick without delay...
__Pinot Noir 2010. Cuvée Saint Salonius. There will be 1500 bottles of it. This wine is tha baby compared of the one I tasted last december (it was a 2007), but you feel already the substance, the wonder is all here waiting to awake. Hard to spit, says B. I don't. Samuel shows us also the intensity of the color, a particularity of the island : the volumes are not low in term of yields but the tannins are colored for a Pinot, which gives this particular intensity in the glass. This is, he says, directly tied to the terroir. Brother Marie-Pâques says that there's a short maceration like 7 days, then the pressing is done smoothly, and stopped when the press juice risks turning into unwanted aromas, like bitter or herby notes.
__Cuvée Saint Sauveur 2010 (old Syrah), from a cask too. Deep nose, very ripe aromas. Samuel says that the maceration time here is between 7 and 10 days. Let's remind that all the reds are destemmed. Even if only in its 5th month of life, the wine is gourmand, with these supple tannins and this freshness and a good length, qualities that are rare to get that early. Samuel says that the terroir of the island and the immersion in the maritime air explains that. THere will be some 4000 bottles of Syrah for this vintage.
__Mourvèdre Noviciat 2010. Very beautiful wine, with juicy tannins that are already a pleasure to masticate in the mouth and swallow. Samuel Bouton says that what makes the excellency of Bandol Mourvèdre wines is the marine breeze which licks the slopes of the Bandol slopes and compensate the summer heat and scorching sun. Here on Saint Honorat, the vines literally bath permanently in the sea breeze from all direction and that's what makes this Mourvèdre so beautiful. Frère Marie-Pâques at the entrance of the Abbey A few public prices for the wines of the Abbaye de Lérins :
Cuvée Saint Pierre (white), public price 22 €
Cuvée Saint Honorat (red) 32 to 35 € (depending of the vintage)
Cuvée Saint Sauveur (old Syrah) 41 €
Cuvée Saint Cézaire (Chardonnay) 51 €
Cuvée Saint Lambert (Mourvèdre) 90 €
Saint Salonius (Pinot Noir) 190 €.

Abbaye Notre Dame de Lérins Ile Saint Honorat CS 10040 - 06414 CANNES cedex phone +33 4 92 99 54 32 commercial [at] abbayedelerins [dot] com Restaurant La Tonnelle 04 92 99 54 08 Accomodation (Hôtellerie) at the Abbey (40 € per night) Useful informations & contacts Satellite view on Saint Honorat

Comments

[Ed Ramos]

Thanks for this article. Although my interest in St. Honorary is not related to wine-making, I found your article very informative. Your article presents the community in a very attractive light and makes the reader want to visit. When is the best time to go so that it is not too hot and there are no crowds? October?

[Bert]

October is perfect, but september would be fine too, and the fact that the Mediteranean is all around moderates the heat anyway. In October the tourist pressure will be bearable in the whole region, making your moves more easy, particularly when you drive and commute.