Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

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.

Vendanges, Harvest 2019 (one)

Junko Arai with Julien Pineau

I toured a few vineyards this year to see the harvest, 2019 has been a very dry year in several regions, with much of the Loire for example having even less rain (actually no rain at all for several months in the Cher valley) than Provence or the Rhône. But as you'll see the answers are pretty positive, this vintage 2019 will be quite good and same for the volumes. Plus the weather at harvest time was ideal, sunny, not too warm, a breeze to keep the pickers happy, and no need to say I was myself very happy driving around on my motorbike, ideal weather, of course rain will be welcome [it has started as I write this] but this nice weather day after day will be remembered fondly.

Yes, Junko Arai was there to pick her Côt and when I heard the day before she'd be around I was thrilled, knowing she comes rarely from Japan. She downsized her surface from 6 to 2 hectares here, with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Côt the wine being wholly exported to Japan. this year the Côt will be taken care of by Julien Pineau and she'll do the job for the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay, Junko says she loves Burgundy wines but the vineyard prices there make it impossible to do wine there, so she'll kind of work on the 2 varieties here in Touraine, which she planted years ago. And Junko also made wine in Japan this year, but the weather was really hot, even if she chose a cooler area in the Yamagata prefecture (Tohoku), her variety is Delaware there (she did the harvest a few weeks ago).
Pic above : Ben Nerot and Josh Barber on left

Philippe Jambon (Beaujolais)

Philippe and Catherine Jambon at home

Chasselas, Burgundy
Visiting Catherine and Philippe Jambon in their wine farm is a delight like their wines, all is real there, their house has no makeup, no fancy tech or electric gate and remains unpretentious with weeds growing here and there. the place is like it has been since it was built, just with the wrinkles of time passing. For whoever would drink a natural wine for the 1st time of his life, beginning with one of Jambon's cuvées would have the expected triggering effect, after which you can't really come back to the mainstream stuff : unfiltered and without SO2, they're vivid and alive and oddly can endure time as well, you hardly remain indifferent when you drink that.
We showed up at the farm a few days before the harvest, the quiet before the storm, the weather was nice (like it's been for months in a row this year) and not too hot, perfect for a few glasses in the shade...

Philippe makes wine from his own parcels (with a small overall surface) and he also sells négoce wines, these are the vins des copains, buddies' wines (Les Amis de Jambon), they are wines made in the same no-makeup free style and Jambon just puts his stamp on the label, kind of, after helping give a final touch to the cuvée, like keeping it unfiltered or taking out the CO2, or keeping it, whatever. This makes the buyers happy because beyond Philippe's limited estate production, it gives more choice and bottles with in common this unmistakable depth and emotion.

A few words about the village of Chasselas, it is located in Burgundy actually, close to the Burgundy/Beaujolais divide, it is a gem of a quiet place with vineyards on the slopes, a 12th century church and a castle built starting in the 14th century (in the background behind the horses on the pic on left). Picture on right : parcel of La Grande Bruyère in Fuissé (Burgundy side of the divide).

Clos des Vignes du Maynes (Burgundy)

Julien Guillot in the cellar

Cruzille, Burgundy
The Clos des Vignes du Maynes is a family domaine since the early 1950s' when Julien Guillot's grandfather Pierre bought the property (this was in 1952) which had a 2-hectare clos with it. He later discovered that this clos was formerly belonging to the monks [moynes in old French] of Cluny (the Abbey was founded in the year 910) which is located 20 kilometers away (much less as the crow flies), and that in 1552 the name was mistakenly changed from "Vignes du Moynes" to "Vignes du Maynes". Pierre Guillot was not from a winemaking or grower family and his approach from the start was to work organic [the word didn't exist back then, making his work look even more backward for the peers], without pesticides and soon without sulfites as he had noticed that he didn't stand sulfites well. He plowed his parcels with a draft horse and used only the Bordeaux mix for the disease, plus compost with manure. At the very beginning he'd sell the wine to the Cave Coopérative de Lugny but he was fired from the group because he proposed to sell in bottles when the direction was still then on the old scheme of selling in bulk to the négoces in Beaune or Nuits-Saint-Georges. So from 1954 the wines of the domaine (which grew along the years from 6 to 11 hectares) were made from organic grapes, without sulfites, no chaptalization, no lab yeast... Julien says that from time to time they have verticales of nature wines going from 1954 to today, not a very common tasting indeed...

Speaking of the region, this part of Burgundy known as the Mâconnais has remained very authentic with remote, quiet villages, vast expanses of woods, hills, winding roads, very similar to the Beaujolais actually but with a more classy architecture. Beaune and the Côtes seem overbuilt and crowded in comparison, you'll get a more authentic feel of what the region was like in the past by driving around on the back roads of the Mâconnais.