Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Les Maitresses de Chai 2019

Anne with Jeanne Yerre

Chargé, Loire
The weather had been tricky until this weekend, I was supposed to attend a couple of small wine fairs the previous weeks, but each time whether the temperatures were a bit low or rain was menacing or both and in one instance I had to ride back to Paris the same evening, which could have been hazardous as I spit less than i should (and atop of that in bad weather, seemed to me very daring). Whatever, then came this summer-like weekend and I had heard at Philippe Tessier that the iconic women-winemakers wine fair Maîtresses de Chai had moved from Paris to the Loire, and not anywhere but at Anne Paillet's [and accessorily Greg's] place in Chargé, which was a recipe for a terrific event, light years from a boring direct-sales event....

Anne's and Gregory's cellar and chai comprise a long and narrow courtyard leading to the cellar under the hill, the tasting tables were planned to be there but given the rising temperatures that day they were swiftly moved in the cellar, the chai actually, which was perfectly appropriate for these Maîtresses de Chai....

Christophe Foucher (Loire)

Christophe Foucher on his tractor

Couffi, Cher valley (Loire)
I hadn't visited Christophe Foucher of La Lunotte since we spent time together a couple months ago in Oakland for Brumaire, the year natural wine fair in the Bay Area, and this was a lot of fun. His wine farm is not far from where i stay when I come on weekends, and I stumble on him very often at the saturday morning market in Saint Aignan, a small market with meat, charcuterie, vegetables, cheese and fish which a few other vignerons of the area attend (also a good time of the week to sit in a café and watch people walking by).

I remember Christophe told me to drop by a couple weeks before to taste a few wines and that what i ended up doing. When I arrived at his place he wasn't there; his son Victor whom I met for the first time told me he'd be there soon and I told him it was no problem, I'd sit outside near the family cat and wait for him. I love his place, it's like his wines, real and without makeup, with a large tree to sit in the shade when it's hot. Christophe soon arrived at the wheel of his tractor, straight from his vineyard where he had been cutting the weeds.

Philippe Tessier, Cheverny (Loire)

Philippe Tessier & son

Cheverny, Sologne (Loire)
The Sologne is home to quite a few outstanding vignerons working naturally in both the vineyard and the cellar. This region, which sits roughly in the middle of the extended Loire region, is mostly covered with woods (3/4) and dotted with thousands of ponds (3000) because of the clayish layer under the sandy surface, and the Sologne is foremost know as a hunting region because of its wildlife and of course it is home to several outstanding chateaux, among which Chateau de Chambord and right near Philippe Tessier's domaine, the Chateau de Cheverny pictured on left (which is said to have been the inspiration for Tintin's Chateau de Moulinsart). In short, this region is very diverse and atypical for a wine region.
Philippe Tessier established his winery in 1981, taking the wheel from his parents who had set up the domaine in 1961. Prior to 1961, his father and befor him his grandfather were régisseurs (farm managers) in the Chateau de Troussay nearby through a fermage contract (they leased the farm land from the owners).

At the beginning when his parents settled here in 1961 the domaine was a polyculture farm, they raised cattle (milk cows, then later meat cows) as well as other crops like asparagus (Sologne with its sandy soil is asparagus country) and with vineyards. When Philippe took the reins in 1981 he recentered on the vineyard/winemaking part which he deemed more interesting, turning the farm into a winery. His father in his time was selling his wine in bulk to the négociants, later selling also a part in cubitainers (5 or 10-liter plastic tanks) to local private customers. Philippe was the one who started selling wine in bottles.

La Table Rouge (Loire)

Philippe Chigard with Claude in their cellar

Noizay, Vouvray (Loire)
Philippe Chigard is a man with multiple skills, he teaches at the Viticulture School of Amboise where he trains students in the Art of handling a draft horse in the vineyard, he heads a service company doing draft horse plowing for organic growers like Vincent Carême and Domaine Huet and he makes natural wine himself from a small surface in the Vouvray area. Philippe Chigard initially studied at the Viticulture School of Beaune (Burgundy) where he learnt the draft horse trade with Abel Bizouard, a horse breeder who helped reintroduce the draft horse in the Burgundy vineyard.

When he settled near Amboise he started the training course for draft horse at the viticulture school with students coming from different regions. Then he began to plow for growers (often on steep and old parcels where using tractors was dangerous) and he was at one point offered to get a small and old parcel (125 years old !) near a cliff, the owner was getting reluctant to keep working on it and Philippe accepted the challenge to start making his own wine. This parcel was indeed a remnant of the old-fashioned vineyards with fruit trees scattered among the rows, he was to name this parcel La Table Rouge because of the large picnic table where he and his friends would sit around after working or picking at harvest. Claude was an emergency doctor in her former life and she learned the wine trade by doing it, she is now as passionate as Philippe in their gardener approach in the tending of the vines.
Pictures on the sides : courtesy of Claude

Clos de la Meslerie (Vouvray, Loire)

Peter Hahn with his wife Juliette

Vernou-sur-Brenne, Vouvray (Loire)
Peter Hahn is a vigneron in the Vouvray Appellation, he makes wine exclusively from Chenin grown on his 4-hectare estate surface outside Vernou-sur-Brenne, one of the villages in the Vouvray area (see linked map) which sits along the Brenne river (pictured on right). Peter is American, born in New York and he spent his youth with his parents in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan) before later working in finance and doing trading in London and New York. But beyond the wine perspective, Peter went through a life-changing experience after moving into this beautiful domaine and mansion nestled in the middle of woods and vineyards, something that makes every city dweller including Parisians dream.

I heard about Peter Hahn when I made my story about Philippe Chigard who was doing draft-horse plowing on one of his parcels at the time, Peter Hahn farms his vineyard organically and he vinifies his wine naturally, making a single cuvée every year from all his parcels except for an occasional sparkling. Peter speaks French fluently and the whole interview was made in French.
The Vouvray Appellation area while not very large has a good share of good producers like Vincent Carême, Michel Autran, Jacky Blot, François Chidaine, Domaine Huet, and its sister Appellation Montlouis just on the opposite side of the Loire river has also a vibrant group of winemakers (some working on both regions) farming organic and eschewing any additives or correction during the vinification.

Régis & Gabriele Dansault (Loire)

Gabriele & Régis dansault

Montlouis-sur-Loire, Loire Valley
I discovered the Domaine de L'Ouche Gaillard (which was before then under my radar) through my spotting and trying one of their reds (Farandole 2010), it was made from organic grapes and looking at the label made me think it might be interesting ; the wine was indeed lovely, hearty, a bit rustic and probably unfiltered, the label said it contained sulfites but the feel was it must be very low, if any. I thus contacted the vigneron who agreed to receive me in Montlouis. Doing further sesearch before my visits I found out that they made wines without SO2 which added to my interest.

The Domaine de L'Ouche Gaillard has a 15 hectare surface with both white (Chenin of course) and red varieties on the Montlouis area. Régis Dansault is the son of a farmer in La Ville-aux-Dames (near Montlouis) who was growing several crops (mixed farming including milk cows) like it used to be in the past. Régis started his own farm business in 1984, also growing several crops at the beginning but he was more interested by the wine part, focusing later exclusively on wine production. His father used to make table wine he'd sell in bulk & bottles locally, and they opened a retail shop in 1985 where they'd sell their own wine and the ones of a few neighboring vignerons. this was a time where bulk sales to private buyers was common, especially for red table wine in La Ville-aux-dames. At the time they worked from 4 or 5 hectares of vines (part being rents), 70 ares of Chenin on Montlouis and the rest in red varieties (often hybrids) on the less prestigious terroir of La Ville-aux-Dames. His wish was to work more on the vin d'Appellation (AOC wines) and develop the Montlouis part.

Marie Rocher (Loire)

Marie disgorging a bottle of pet'nat

Pouillé-sur-Cher (Loire)
Here is yet a new winemaker popping up in this corner of the Cher valley in the loire : Marie Rocher. She has been around natural wine for years but in the publishing sector, her last work in this field being Vins à la Carte, a book gathering Jules Chauvet's tasting notes. I asked her to tell me again how she landed here : She like her father was a regular of Les Vins du Coin, a tasting fair gathering winemakers of the area every first saturday of december in Blois, she and her father would have a table there, with their books (many featuring natural wine heros). When her father Jean-Paul Rocher passed away in 2012 she took over the publishing work, having been immersed in natural-wine things with her father for years, she presented the books at Les Vins du Coin, Vinicircus and La Beaujoloise (other gems of wine fairs taking place in the French provinces).

When she says for years, she means it, when she graduated from high school in 1996 she took part to the harvest at Marcel and Marie Lapierre in the Beaujolais, her father being a longtime friend of Marcel and Marie [let's remind that in 1996 this movement was completely under the radar even if Paris]. She recounts that at the time they were considered as illumined or crazy for loving these wines, and even in Paris very few people were eating organic food then. there was one place only to drink these wines in Paris in these years, the bar Rue des Envierges managed by François Morel and Bernard Pontonnier.
When I arrived at La Tesnière for this visit, Ben (pictured on right) was just unloading some posts he had to plant in the parcel along the farm for Julien Pineau. If i remember they were finishing the pruning for the whole surface and were in time for the schedule, with only the worrying risk of frost hanging around like always in april when the buds come out too early.

Philippe Brand (Alsace)

Philippe Brand with Blandine in the vineyard

Ergersheim, Alsace
The Domaine Brand & Fils has deep roots in the village of Ergersheim, the farm buidings belong to the family since 1750 and until the 2nd half of the 20th century this was a polyculture farm with wheat, farm animals and tobacco growing (a traditionnal crop in this part of Alsace since its introduction here in 1620). Ergersheim (pictured on left, shot from Philippe's parcels) is a village sitting some 20 km west of Strasbourg in the Bas-Rhin département, along the first slopes of the Vosges hills.

On the picture on the right you can see the entrance of the farm, typically in this Alsatian architecture you have the porch, the house and farm building on the sides and in the back already some fields, vegetable gardens and farm animals. In my opinion Alsace had reached over the centuries the finest village/farm architecture, with winemaking fixtures (presses, cellars) completely integrated in its village life. And you see the same thing on the other side in Germany, along the slopes of the Black Forest like in Gengenbach, Kinzigtal. By the way Alsace was part of Germany from 1871 to 1918 and there's a shared culture on both sides of the Rhine, which you feel when you travel to the foothills of both the Vosges and the Black Forest.

Verjus wine bar (San Francisco)

Financial District, San Francisco
A new wine bar has opened in San Francisco, Verjus, it is located downtown at the limit of the financial district and other, more residential areas (at the corner of Washington st & Montgomery st not far from Embarcadero). It joins a small group of several successful venues of the Bay Area samely focused on natural wines, namely Punchdown (the 1st), Terroir, Ordinaire and Ruby. The wine bar (which is also a wine shop and a restaurant) while keeping a casual style (no reservation) is very roomy and well designed with two large connecting rooms that were separate in the early years of the building I guess.

Oddly, the whole building in which Verjus sits, the Eclipse Champagne Building which was built in the early 1850s', housed the first Champagne facility of the West Coast, Eclipse Champagne, which started producing in 1874. There's an open kitchen in one of these rooms while the other has a wall of bottles with the price on them (more pictures on the venue on this page). When we went there with Alex and chef Keisuke Akabori (works at Stonemill Macha) it had been opened only for 6 weeks and was buzzing even on that monday evening.

Women Winemakers of Georgia

Georgia winemakers in San Francisco

Milbrae, south San Francisco
All these women winemakers from Georgia were also pouring their wines at Brumaire and if my carelessness in managing my time made that I missed them there, at least i could correct this misstep the following day thanks to a private tasting organized by Alex (pictured above in the background) in his Vineyard Gate wine shop in Milbrae in South San Francisco. The wine shop which was closed that day (monday) is just a couple of minutes on foot from the BART station. The man who helped these winemakers attend was there too, Chris Terrell, he is the importer at New York-based Terrell Wines. Like the linked article implies, if you had a Georgian wine in New York, there's a good chance it came in through Chris Terrell who imports 22 family wineries from Georgia. I learnt something interesting also in this linked article, Chris first discovered Georgia by cycling through the country in 2004, this was before he was dealing with wine; we have something in common (I also cycled through eastern and western Europe and the U.S.)

Georgia has gone through rising export levels in the last few years (export statistics here), with Russia still leading by large, then much behind, Ukraine and China. But the wines to these 3 countries are mostly conventional wines while what we're dealing with here is a niche of natural, organic traditional Georgian wines using qvevri, the large clay vessels known here since Antiquity. This article (from a conventional perspective) points to the growing importance of the Chinese market through the return of its silk road policy; it states that the natural wine exports for the West is a minor phenomenon but i think it has huge potential to grow in the long term, as all the countries (including Russia & China one day) will have a sizeable percentage of their wine public turning to uncorrected wines.