Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Pre-Brumaire party on Treasure Island

Party with view

Treasure Island, San Francisco
For Europeans who are not familiar with Brumaire, this is certainly THE wine-tasting event on the West Coast for anyone with a soft spot for natural wines. The event is quickly fully booked as wine lovers reserve their tickets in advance for this single-day tasting and celebrating in San Francisco (more later about it, you can guess I attended). But the evening before, there's a more intimate event set somewhere on Treasure Island; like Brumaire it's organized by Bradford Taylor of Ordinaire, Josh Eubank of Percy Selections, Quinn Kimsey-White of Psychic Wines and Matt Coelho of Woods Beer Co. Here is a visual oversight of this party, akin to some side parties held along wine fairs in Angers, Montpellier or elsewhere, but with something different of course, we're in San Francisco, with all the cool vibes of the background. For the information, Treasure Island is an artificial island that was used for the military, and a brief look at a satellite image shows it's still a quirky place, not fit for mainstream tourism, with its warehouses and empty lots. The word was that it all began at 7 pm, and I reached the island with a commuter bus from near Embarcadero, this was fully dark already, wasn't sure to find the address, happilly a lady on the bus told me where to get out. Even using Google Maps it wasn't easy (I disable the location function on my phone), I had to walk around poorly-lit warehouses before I ended up finding the party.

I had arrived the previous day, landing at SFO, and as soon as I emerged from the BART on 19th street in Oakland I stopped at Punchdown, the first wine bar centered on natural wines to have opened in the Bay Area. i went there unannounced, this was the early afternoon and Jackie (pic on left) who spent time in France with vignerons recently explained me about the two nice wines I had. My second stop was Ordinaire (I was to sleep 15 minutes from there by walk), the co-organizer of Brumaire. Still quiet on an early afternoon, I enjoyed a glass of La Lunotte poured by Diego (pictured here with Mikayla, an old friend from his East Coast days with whom he just reconnected (she happens to live close from here now). The young mother had walked in with her baby girl (there was another young family with baby at a table), i love this casual side in here...

Wine people in the Cher valley (Loire)

Marie Rocher

Pouillé-sur-Cher, Loire
The weather was nice and with spring almost there (for a few days at least) I reconnected with the wine people in the Cher valley. Everyone is busy pruning, trying to finish their surface in march. The surprise encounter of the week was Marie Rocher, the publisher of several books focused on natural wine and respectful viticulture. You may remember how she and her father Jean-Paul (who passed away in 2012) published many books on natural wine including Alice Feiring's (this linked story was in 2010). She continued the work of her father with the publishing work, she joined the Éditions de l'Épure where she published for example Vins à la Carte, a book centered on Jules Chauvet's tasting notes.

But Marie decided to make a decisive step and get on the other side of the screen, sort of, and make wine herself as well. She published wine people, wrote about them, loved the wines and now she is going to make her wines after training with Bruno Allion (good mentor !) : She buys grapes and after a first micro trial in 2017, she vinified her first wines in 2018, so be ready for another player in the vibrant Cher valley....

Draft Horse Plowing in the Vineyards

Turning around at the end of the row

Vernou-sur-Brenne, Vouvray (Loire)
I spent one day recently with trainees and their teacher Philippe Chigard (pictured on right and left), they were learning the skill of handling a massive plow horse and holding tight the different walk plows used for the vineyards. Horse plowing is getting more and more popular these days, it has everything for it, it is beautiful, an ancient craft where you feel one with your parcel and at peace with the universe, getting drop by drop the inner peace of these huge but sweet animals.

Of course the orgnic farming and especially the biodynamic farming help a lot in that direction, because with the latter there's the visionary understanding taught by Rudolf Steiner that it is utmost important that a farm, like a living organism has all its farm animals animating it because it echoes on the things you grow. Of course there's the image also which is fashionable nowadays but no matters what, this is a great trend and it's heartening to know it's growing. I spent a few hours years ago with another expert on draft-horse plowing, Francis Dopff, this was in Alsace and he was also training young people in the skill. Dopff was working for top biodynamic domaines in Alsace was also doing horse skidding in the Vosges, extracting logs in steep terrain with uneasy access for heavy machinery (his website).

Les Pénitentes (Angers)

Derain, Mosse & Co

Angers, Loire Valley
There are a few days at the turn of january and february when Angers is bustling with winemakers, wine geeks and professionnals from all over. Beyond the Salon d'Angers around which it all started, you have a few side wine fairs focused on natural, organic wine which have been a growing magnet for buyers and importers, including this one, Les Pénitentes where you could taste this year the wines from 26 vignerons. For the aforementioned reasons the accomodations in the area are fully booked and it's close to impossible to find a place in Angers to crash for the night, so I made it a day trip from Paris, returning home the same evening. Again, I used the car-sharing scheme Blablacar for that, much more fun and so much cheaper than the SNCF (prices vary, but I paid 23 € each way).

The wine event takes place in an architectural gem, the Hôtel des Pénitentes which had several uses from its construction in the 15th century, including housing a female monastic order (the Pénitentes) in 1640. Incidently, as I was taking a picture of a narrow side street with old cobble stones, I was talked to by an elderly woman named Madeleine Cesbron (I asked for her name) who guided me to the historic gems of the area, which sits along a Roman road. I was thinking in the side of my mind about the tasting having started and was a bit worried about delaying my arrival but she was so kind and knowledgeable and eager to tell that I stayed with her quite some time as she showed me around. I think she was a teacher in the past or something like that, she showed me this incredible house built in 1582 (year is engraved on the beam) where you can see sculptures representing American Indians, this was the time news from the discovery of America was reaching Europe with all its exciting imagery. She told me many details about several of these statues. I find it interesting that the place is now a wine shop (regular mainstream, if I can judge from a quick glance). She also showed me the church (Eglise de la Trinité) on the other side of the street which had a special door for the women convent Abbaye du Ronceray which was embedded in the side of the church, allowing the nons to enter the church without venturing outside...

Wine News (73)

Authentic farmouse brewery....

Got a backlog of "News" items that may not seem so new by now, but I'm an adept of slow things, no need to hurry, anything looked upon with fresh eyes can be news...
We had this beer a few months ago thanks to a special delivery by my friend Alex who has special conduit for small allotment deliveries from this very unique brewery located near Austin, Texas. Most Europeans have a distorded image of Texas and this could change overnight if (beyond going there and wandering around on the side roads like i did long time ago) they just had a sip of this beer. This Jester King Simple Means is certainly one of the best and most surprising American beers (made with native yeast !), just delicious and easy drinking with a moderate 5,5 % alcohol content. The Rate Beer page about this beer also sees some common ground with the Düsseldorf Alt beers, happy to hear that, i stayed a few times near Düsseldorf and the local Diebels Alt was my favorite beer then. Jester King beers are pretty confidential and hard to find, if you see one, whatever the type, grab it.

Backyard winemaking in Russia

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Плюс 25 литров яблочно виноградного вина. Предпоследний розлив этого сезона. 216 бутылок уже розлито. Вкусное домашнее ароматное молодое вино.Без химии консервантов красителей итд.#винишко#винодел#вино#виноделие#домашнеевино#ручнаяработа#розлив#winemaker#viniculture#wine#handcrafted#handmade#солнцево#солнцевскийвинодел#ягодноевино#выходной#хобби

Une publication partagée par Yakovenko EV (@iakovenko263) le 20 Oct. 2018 à 10 :43 PDT

25-liter home bottling just outside Moscow (by iakovenko263)

Little-known to us is the fact that Russians are fond of making wines for themselves, wether from a few vines grown in their garden or from fruit purchased around. This has been going on for ages and is not only rooted in the supply deficiencies of the socialist regime a few decades ago, deficiencies that pushed many Russians to rely in part on their home-made groceries. I wrote a story a few years ago about Russia being a forgotten giant in organic production, thanks largely to the fact that people learned to grow things without chemicals, and beyond the Soviet aspect of the cause, the other is that the people of this region have a deep, almost-religious love for Mother Nature and regularly go for walks in the wild foraging for food . You'll see people of all kinds of walks of life walking through the notoriously-endless forests to pick mushrooms and other berries.

But for wine Russians also often kept this do-it-yourself approach, as you can check on these few Instagram peeks into the private life of ordinary folks (some of these views include Russian-speaking neighboring countries), people just make a bit of wine for the fun of it, and most of the time very natural even if they may use some kind of hybrid varieties. Even during the boring years of the Soviet Union, people loved wine, not just vodka, and in cities where people hadn't their own couple of rows of vines, they'd rely on the wine shops, at least when these had goods. In this 1989 movie named Glass Labyrinth by director Mark Osepian which describes a story happening in 1980, you can see at one point a bunch of unruly teenagers joining a queue starting outside a wine shop (picture on left), the queue going all the way around the building to the courtyard behind, obviously because a sudden shipment of wine had people ready to spend whatever time needed to get a few good bottles (and in some cases sell them back on the black market). Watch the scene on Youtube (full movie) at min 23:10. This movie sheds light on the quiet despair of youths who were between staggering mainstream living and hooliganism, at a time no sign of change was really showing at the horizon. Later at min 31:40 they trick their entry into a fancy restaurant with live music. This was another era indeed, now in early-21st-century Russia sophistication setlles in gradually and божоле нуво (Beaujolais Nouveau) has become trendy.

Tea farm (Taiwan)

Gu Jing-Ran standing near his tea plants

Beipu, Taiwan
Sorry for this delay from my last story, this one will move away a bit from the central topic of wine, but you'll see that there are many issues in here which bring us back to a common core of truth and authenticity. I don't know anyway about locally-made wines in Taiwan although I'm aware there are a few indigenous spirits that I'll look into next time I travel there, but Taiwanese tea is definitely on the map for conoisseurs, the island having a relatively long uniterrupted history for cultivating the best of it. To tell it bluntly I'm not a tea person, but B. is, and her many years spent in Japan helped her develop an addiction to good tea, so it was very interesting to see her open up with what she tasted here, and also appreciating the intricacies of what we could call the Taiwanese tea-serving ceremony which is different from the handling of it in Japan, beginning with the size and shapes of the cups and tea pots.

Anyway thanks to Rebecca (wine importer @ C'est le Vin) we had the chance to visit this tea farm where the young grower works naturally. You may know that tea growing faces the same dilemmas as viticulture, with most commercial plantations spraying chemicals on the leaves and the soil for conveniency [not to speak of the many ways to interfere with the final product through aromatic enhancers like it's done for cheap tea]. Here this grower works without chemicals or additives, and we were thrilled to learn that René-Jean Dard as well as Dominique Derain among others were also priviledged to discover this real-tea farm at the foot of the mountains... To get there, we took the hi-speed train to Hsinchu just outside Taipei and met Rebecca there, driving then to the Beipu area. Taiwan is a very green country, seems like as soon as you leave Taipei you're surrounded with forested hills and mountains, with streams and rivers everywwhere, this asks for more inroad trips to discover the countryside.

Rebecca Yeh, wine importer (Taiwan)

Rebecca Yeh

Taipei, Taiwan
Wine exports to Asia have been growing these last years including for natural wine and Taiwan which is known for its great food also joined the fray for wines made without correction or additives. This story is about the first Taiwan-based importer exclusively centered on these wines, here is Rebecca Yeh, who set up her company C'est le Vin a few years ago in Taipei. Starting with a handful of French producers in the first year, Rebecca now imports a few dozens, and C'est le Vin has become the Taiwanese hub for natural wines.

Rebecca had worked for a wine distributor here and had come across organic wine but here experience with these wines was so-so [winemaking of mainstream "organic wines" is often conventional, making them pretty disappointing]. Rebecca discovered natural wines through Japanese importer Yoshio Ito (pictured on right in Taipei with Derain & Rebecca) who had her taste wines from Alexandre Bain, Clos Rougeard and Marc Pesnot as well as Dard & Ribo. After that she had the opportunity to travel in France and visit these producers as well as others and this trip really turned the tide, making her realize how these wines were really different, not only delicious to drink but with all the other aspects which she discovered while travelling there. She remember at the time asking all the winemakers what was natural wine and she was touched by the shared answer they had, relating to truthness, respect of the earth and harmonious relations with other people. She felt she had to bring this all to Taiwan and have the Taiwanese people and wine lovers enjoy a good selection themselves. Japan was for that a good inspiration and she learned from its importers how to best take care of these wines, as Taiwan also has a climate that can be harmful to wines if these aren't properly stored and shipped.

Paris wine bar : L'Amitié Rit (Montreuil)

The counter on a tasting day

Montreuil, just outside Paris
There is no shortage of bars and bistrots in Paris in the matter of natural wine but exploring the close suburbs on the other side of the périphérique (the hellish freeway circling Paris) is also rewarding, in spite of the fact that many people don't cross this divide outward easily. Montreuil was in the past a blue collar town and its demographics changed dramatically over the last decades, now the town is part inhabited by bobos and young families who moved there because Paris' apartments are way too expensive or because they liked the cooler vibe here, and part by non-European immigrants, especially Malians (Montreuil is sometimes called little Bamako). The two communities don't really mix together but still go along well, and because of the good taste of the alternative crowd there are plenty of nice things in Montreuil, a farmers' market, an American craft beer brewery, an organic wine fair, and a few cool places for natural wine like L'Amitié Rit (read Meg Zimbeck's page on Paris by Mouth for more on Montreuil, ilke pizza joint serving natural wines...).

The wine bar, caviste & bistrot was founded by Thierry Dubourg (the guy with the hat behind the counter on the picture), he worked initially in the movie distribution sector and one day he was out of work and after the shock encounter with the wines of Pfifferling and Gramenon, he decided to start this bar & wine shop. The venue has become a reference including in Paris for it's wide choice of cuvées and affordability.

Carole Kohler (Loire)

Carole Kohler with her young Chenin

Thouars, southern Loire
This story takes place just outside of Thouars, a small town located some 35 kilometers south of Saumur, and I visited Carole early november after having heard about her through family of mine who live 20 km from there. Carole and her husband are reviving the wine culture of their home town of Thouars. Like for many such towns across France, vineyards in the past were planted all around the city for centuries because basically each place in the country would produce its own wine. These vineyards had all but vanished especially around the turn from the 19th to the 20th century with the phylloxera and the easier transportation of southern wines. The wine made near Thouars was actually until then quite reknowned among the nobility of the region, and this is a city where the noble family Maison de la Tremoille reigned during 11 centuries on an area covering much of Anjou.

Carole Kohler and her husband Brice live in the hamlet of Fleury on the hill overlooking Thouars, that's precisely where the best terroirs of Thouars were located, and she decided very recently to replant vineyards and revive the wine culture of the small city which hadn't had a winery or a domaine for ages. The work wasn't smooth and easy, as she says in this interview in the regional newspaper, she lost 5 % of the young plantings in 2016 because of the drought and in 2017 70 % of the buds were burnt by the black frost that afflicted many of the wine regions. To this day she has replanted 1,2 hectare and targets in the future 3 to 3,5 hectares.