Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Wine news (75)

La Ferme du Cade

Here are a few photographic notes of wines that stood out and events where wine flows, we'll look back a couple months for these things. Some of these pictures are very long and narrow, I shot them with my phone.
these first few pictures were shot at Paris by Wine, a tasting event for professionnals that took place at the Musée de la Chasse [Hunting Museum] in Paris (directions). The domaines that took part were mostly from Burgundy but there were a few other domaines which shared the artisan/uninterventionist philosophy, this other group having been selected by Gilles Manzoni. The setting of this tasting in the middle of the Marais was particularly in line with the idea of tradition, with these vaulted rooms, thick stone walls and game trophies hanging.

This Domaine de la Ferme du Cade is located in the Gard département (Southern Rhone) 50 km north of Nîmes, David Teyssier is doing a very good job here on his 7 hectares (plus as much hay fields), he is growing grapes since 2006, it was his first vintage in 2019 with 10 000 bottles because prior to that he was selling grapes to the local coopérative, stopping in 2018 when he made his first trials with 3000 bottles vinified naturally. He keeps hens and chicken in his farm, moving them with a chicken coop on wheels in order to bring them to different parcels.
__ Prime, Rosé 2019, made in collaboration with the Soulier brothers. 80 % Clairette (direct press) blended with Cinsault. Super nice color. Unfiltered, a bit SO2 (1gr/hectoliter) because malolactic started too early. 30 hectoliters of this. Priced around 15 € in cavistes (6,5 € pro price).
__ Les Garbettes 2018, a red barely darker than the rosé, 80 % Grenache 20 % Cinsault, on slopes. 7-day maceration, he tries to make easy-drinking wines. Superb nose, smoky notes. 15 € retail (7 € pro) lovely wine.

German & Austrian natural wines in Paris

The crowd for the tasting at Septime

Septime, Paris
Alexander Zülch of Vins Vivants has been dealing with natural wines for quite a few years now (nearly ten), he began to import wines from Germany and Austria to France 6 years ago, importing 15 domaines over

here, and he also imports the other way around. Alex organized a tasting of these Austrian/German wines a few weeks ago at Septime, this tasting event which was named Muskatnuss ! in reference to a 1970s' movie scene [video on the right lasting 1:30 min] with actor Louis de Funès who was well known in Germany as well, the name of the movie in France being le Grand Restaurant [full movie in French through this link], quite funny a movie as it shows the hidden side of managing a high-end restaurant (named Septime but located at Ledoyen), and this, in the 1960s....
This winetasting event was a good opportunity to feel the beat of the wine scene in these countries (so close to France and we know so little).

Alex says there's a general openness here in France among the gastronomy, restaurant people concerning wines from outside France with wines from Italy, Greece, Georgia, and now Austrian and also German wines are joining the list of foreign wines found in good restaurants. I asked Alex how these winemakers and Winzer are faring in their respective markets, he says that it's obviously the future, every interesting restaurant that is opening these days chooses this type of wines, and people ask for that, the Berlin restaurant scene saw many demanding restaurants focused on the ingredients and food like we have in Paris and they know about these natural wines found in similar venues in Paris, New York or Copenhagen. Alex says that this came suddenly and recently, like for example 3 or 4 years ago there wasn't such a demand from the public, you can feel it in cities like Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, even if it has not yet reached the climax of Paris or New York in that regard ...

I asked Alex if there was someone he discovered recently, he talked about Weingut Seckinger in Pfalz (Palatinat), Germany; this is a young domaine managed by 3 brothers who took over the family winery and converting to natural wine in a quite successful way with very interesting rieslings going through 2-year élevages. He also discovered a very nice producer in Italy, actually it's in the North in a German-speaking area near the Austrian border, this is Weingut Pranzegg, a small domaine managed by Martin Gojer, he will add it like an "intruder" in his portfolio of imports at his Vins Etrangers structure which is based in Alsace, France. At Pranzegg they have 3 alpine terroirs in high altitude.

Standing bars (tachinomiya) in Kansai

Pouring sake in a tachinomiya

Kansai, Japan
Here we go again, and if there's something I'd never miss in Japan, it is having a good time in a standing bar (called tachinomiya here) in the evening, when the crowd of white-collar salarymen flood them after work on their way to the train station where they'll later catch the train home... I'll try not to repeat myself but Japan is a highly pragmatic country, where modernism hasn't excluded tradition and fun. Political correctness never really took hold here and coercitive regulations may exist on the paper but in the real world there's a pragmatic laissez faire : people smoke in bars, some tiny venues are engulfed in barbecue fumes with no civilian zealot to harass the "perpetrators" or report these things to the administration, and when you're aware of the gap with the situation of our own countries it's a breath of fresh air to spend time in these working-class bars. To top it all, you're not looked upon on a negative way when you happen to have had more booze than you could handle after your hard day's work. Japan is a pretty cool country in many ways even if I know it has also strict codes and there's pressure from the group and the society we may not be aware of when we're not living here and speak the language...
Here are a few standing bars I went to in Osaka & Kyoto, some I went alone (it is definetely possible for a gaijin, you'll not be thrown out), some with Keizou & Matt.

Terroirs of sake

Chief brewer Keizou Ishida with farmers

Ryūō (Shiga prefecture)
Sake is made with rice and water, and while the quality and purity of the water part is easily measured, this is more difficult for rice because its culture nationwide usually implies chemicals, fertilizers and herbicide. To get a supply of clean rice, Matsuse shuzo has put in place partnerships with several farmers so they won't use fertilizers, chemicals or herbicide along the growing season. What helped also are the incentives by the Shiga authorities toward a cleaner agriculture using much less chemicals, as nearby Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake in Japan into which 400 rivers & streams flow, providing drinking water for about 15 million people in the Kansai region, including Kyoto, Osaka & Kobe. Working without chemicals or with much less chemicals takes more manpower (like for taking out weeds by hand) which is why some growers are reluctant, but thanks to the few contracted farmers they work with, Matsuse got the "Certification for environmentally friendly agricultural products" [環境こだわり農産物認証].

The farmers are also encouraged to put in place new farming methods allowing to handle this organic culture, like leaving the rice paddies under water in winter and avoiding to touch the soil, both things being known for enhancing naturally the growth of microorganisms and reinstating the natural exchange ecosystem. But given the interconnection of rice paddies belonging to different farmers it is sometimes difficult to leave a rice field under water when its neighbors don't do it, there must be arrangements on a case-by-case basis concerning the watertightness of the dikes and the access to the drains.

These changes mean a lot because they allow to have the local terroir to be an important part in the end sake, instead of only buying rice from faraway regions (like the Hyogo prefecture famed for its Yamada Nishiki rice). For that purpose the brewery contracts with local farmers with rice paddies sitting on different types of soils which will translate into really different sake, reinstating a notion of terroir/localness that was certainly the norm centuries ago when breweries would use locally-grown rice.
Illustration pictures on the sides : farmers spotted at work in the valley that day (not the ones who work for Matsuse shuzo).

Matsuse sake brewery (Shiga, Japan)

Main room at the Matsuse sake brewery

Yuge, Ryūō (Shiga prefecture)
The Matsuse sake brewery is a small family brewery that is in the sake business since 1860. It is located north of Kyoto in the Shiga prefecture, in a rice-growing valley between two mountain ranges. The facility centered around the brewery room that was built in the early years of the Shōwa era (1930s') is located in the middle of rice paddies along with a cluster of houses typical of the modern Japanese rural habitat. Matsuse is among the few sake breweries that work with farmers who eschew chemicals and herbicide for their rice supply, and also develop the production of terroir sake, therefore it is no surprise that cult winemakers like Pierre Overnoy, Emmanuel Houillon and Hirotake Ooka (pictured on right) visited the brewery a year ago. The heart of the brewery has the vibes of a real place and apart from a few machines it is very traditional and relies on the expert work of diligent kurabitos (sake brewery workers). on the picture above you can see the vatroom on the street level (it holds 18 marge fermenters lined along the walls) as well as the stairs leading to the upper sory where there's a shrine on the left and the small room where the rice is cooled down and dried. To access each area you change shoes, here for example leaving the ones for the vatroom on the ground and putting one the ones waiting on the stairs.

The brewery which employs a dozen workers in the producing season moved along the years focusing on the sourcing of its rice and water, working with local farmers it convinced to farm organic (something more difficult to do with rice growing than vine growing) and digging wells deep enough to find pure water tables. Brewmaster Keizou Ishida (pictured on left) who began to work here 17 years ago as a simple kurabito has implemented extensive changes in the brewing and rice_handling processes along the years for an even better quality, reinstating age-old methods.

Wholesale grape market for home winemakers

A dream for home winemakers....

Kutaisi, Georgia
Last story about Georgia, this was in october.
Tipped about it by Ramaz, I discovered this wholesale grape market on the outskirts of Kutaisi, that was pretty difficult because initially I found nothing on the Internet about it including on Google Maps, I had to ask a local about directions. Nikea's Bazaar (located on Nikea street) is a wholesale vegetable and fruit market with a whole section devoted to grapes at the harvest season. The market is open to everyone, and people come here to buy for example 50 or 100 kg of potatoes or other vegetables at a discount price compared to retail shops downtown. I reached the place with a marshrutka (pic on left) from downtown, very easy, you could even go there by foot. At a distance from the road at the end of a side lane I saw the gate of the market (pic on right). At the beginning I just saw these vans and trucks lined in a huge lot with all sorts of vegetables in large quantities to offer, then at the end of the huge lot I reached the grape market and this was a big surprise : I discovered that city dwellers come here to buy large quantities of grapes with the only aim to make their own wine !

I wish we were allowed to do that in France ! Imagine you'd have access to a négoce market for grapes, say, in the outskirts or Blois, Nantes, Angers, Montpellier or Lyon, you'd buy your few hundred kilograms of grapes, have them crushed and pressed either in the market or at home and have the corresponding volume of juice fermenting in your cellar... That's what Georgian can do, I'm not sure they realize how lucky they are... This is typically the type of direct sales from the producer to the consumer about which our smart politicians like to talk about but never deliver. And if allowed in our countries that would put the pressure on producers of industrial commercial wine as even ordinary people could vote with their feet and make their own healthy (if faulty) wine instead of paying overpriced for the corrected, sulfites-soaked bland beverage they pretend to call wine.

Ramaz Nikoladze (Georgia)

Ramaz Nikoladze in his qvevri room

Nakhshirghele, Georgia
Ramaz Nikoladze is the head of Slow Food in Georgia and he started his small domaine in 2007 just a few kilometers from Kutaisi in the Imereti region on the grounds of his grandparents parcel. Ramaz himself is from this village, same for his parents, he bought his house 6 years ago (pictured on left - it sits on the other side of the narrow road) and completed the unfinished construction that stood near the parcel, eventually setting up his cellar on the basement with a few qvevri buried to their neck. Ramaz' own vineyard surface makes 1,5 hectare in total, his yearly production is about 4000 bottles from his own cellar, plus he sells the wine of his wife's uncle who is 82 years old and also makes wine the traditionnal way in a village 30 km from here (makes 2000 bottles more).

To complement his small production Ramaz occasionally looks for local people who have a family parcel and make wine for themselves, if they're interested and after he speaks with them and is sure they work naturally in the vineyard, he can buy them some fruit. Imereti is a region where there's usually no skin maceration (something we in western Europe credit Georgia for doing all the time) during the vinification and Ramaz was the first to introduce some skin contact in the wines here.
The export part for Ramaz' wines is about 80 % and he sells as far as France, Denmark, Germany, the U.K., the United States, Japan and Australia.
Georgia's grape varieties are very different from the ones we're familiar with in the western hemisphere, here is a webpage with grape pictures to begin have a better idea of what this is about.

Ének Peterson (Georgia)

Ének in her parcel

Persati, Imereti (Georgia)
Ének Peterson is an daring young American woman (with a Hungarian mother as hinted by her first name) who settled in Georgia a few years ago after coming to the country for its culture and singing [By the way, coincidently, her first name, Ének, means song in Hungarian], ending up learning the language by herself, discovering the wine culture of the country and deciding to stay there for good. She worked in a wine bar (not any wine bar, Vino Underground) in Tbilissi the capital and decided to make wine herself. She bought a house outside a village at the foot of the Imereti mountains, with a small surface of vineyard attached to the house and makes wine the traditionnal Georgian way, her first vintage here was in 2016. I visited her from Kutaisi which is about 25 km away, taking a marshrutka, these convenient mini-vans that connect cities and villages in this country (pretty easy from the central bus station, and costs less than one Euro but you have to ask someone for the bus going to Bagdati, as the sign on the bus is only written in Georgian).

I had met Ének for the first time in San Francisco and Oakland where she also took part to Brumaire (the natural wine fair) along with several other women winemakers from Georgia (I actually tasted their wines in Millbrae at Vineyard Gate's shop two days after Brumaire). Ének's production is small but she is among the growing group of Georgian winemakers who export successfully their wines to Japan, Europe and the United States thanks to their age old natural winemaking. Georgian artisan wines are unique in many regards, first, the country is rightly considered the cradle of winemaking along with Armenia, Turkey (Ancient Greece) and a few other nations of the area. Then, if the soviet regime almost obliterated the traditional winemaking by establishing industrial wineries and farms for consumption in the whole of USSR, there had remained (like it is often the case in these circumstances) families in the back country who kept using the ageold buried amphorae (named qvevri here) to make long-maceration wines including for whites.

A Percheron in the Vineyard

Estelle Mulowsky holding the reins

Cher valley (Loire)
More and more growers rely on horse power for plowing in winter and hauling the grape boxes out of the vineyard at harvest, these are usually people who farm organic, want to limit the compacting of their soils and the parcels are often unfit for tractors because of the narrow space between the rows. They also want to help the area revive the use of these farm animals and the age old savoir-faire going with them. Some growers own their own horses like Olivier Cousin or Sébastien Riffault but many more use third-party services for that, which is wise when you have a small surface. I made a story years ago on such a business, with Francis Dopff who worked for some of the best domaines in Alsace. He was at the time training a young guy who hopefully does it by himself now. Very recently I profiled another professionnal doing plowing for organic growers in the Loire, Philippe Chigard, who also trained quite a few trainees eager to learn these skills, and surprisingly many young women had applied.

Here is another young woman, Estelle Mulowsky, who with several associates manages such a service company centered on draft horses, particularly from the iconic Percheron breed. Agil Percherons is the name of this company, it is based in Saint Agil, a small village in the north of the Loir-et-Cher département where coincidentally there's a nice yearly tasting event centered on natural wine, Poison d'Avril which you should not miss. Here are a few pictures and videos about Estelle and her draft-horse job for growers.

Harvest, Vendanges 2019 (two)

Vincent Bergeron

A bit late on schedule, here is the part II
I showed up unannounced at the cellar of Vincent Bergeron also in Montlouis, he was there by chance. Frantz Saumon who still uses part of the cellar wasn't there. Vincent says that here in the area they had losses with the frost in the spring, twice, they tried everything, the wind turbines (for those who could afford), burning straw, anti-frost candles. Then long drought with no rain this year including most of last winter, so, smaller yields this year.
The picture above shows a small cellar room under the cliff which Frantz Saumon vacated for him, he'll try to make Montlouis (sweet wines) here, with élevage on fine lees. This room is more humid than the other room he used last year, maybe 10 % of the volume, like 10 liters per barrel, so it should help in this regard to put the barrels in this one.

Vincent says these frost occurences stretched over more than 2 weeks, the level of threat going up and down, during this time they had to stay on the alert, sleeping little. The other thing is that for 2 weeks you don't do anything else and when the threat is gone suddenly you have everything to manage, the soil, the weeds... On the other hand in 2019 he didn't spray a lot, only 4 times, making a total of kilogram metal/hectare of copper only. But the grapes and vines suffered from drought (those who took leaves down suffered from grilled grapes as well). Himself hasn't cleared the leaves, especially after these frosts, he didn't debud, he left all the foliage and this was a right move. And for the drought there's little they can do, they only watered the baby vines that were planted this year.