Philippe Jambon (Beaujolais)

Philippe Jambon's home and chai (on right, overlooking a vineyard)Chasselas, Beaujolais.
Philippe and Catherine Jambon began their wine adventure by starting a winery against all the trends of the time ; Back in the mid-1990s' the common rule in Beaujolais was to "make the vineyard piss" to use a common expression in the milieu, meaning having yields as high as possible to satisfy the then ever increasing world demand. What Philippe Jambon had in mind was an entirely different sort of wines, wines made from carefully chosen terroirs, and in a traditional way, that is without the additives and manipulations that were often the norm in these Beaujolais bubble years. At that time, he had tasted organicly-farmed, natural-wines by vintners like Dard & Ribo and Gramenon, and he felt that this was the right direction for making beautiful wines. He bought his first vineyard plot in 1997, a one-hectare Gamay vineyard. 1997 was a pivotal year in the Beaujolais, the beginning of a crisis for the region and its high-yields wines which didn't sell anymore. That's when you could find great bargains and buy vineyards at cut-price rates. He found the house with the chai [picture above] a few years later (2000) and added along the years a few carefully-selected vineyards here and there to reach the total surface today of 3,5 hectaresPhilippe Jambon in his cellarI visited Philippe Jambon on a rainy august day. August was awful this year here like in much of France, very rainy and unusually cold. He was a bit nervous about the grapes and the millesime then (especially that he doesn' use chemicals in the vineyard and doesn't chaptalize), but september has brought lots of sun and things seem to turn around for the best.
Another thing about this visit is that another outstanding vintner was visiting there too for a couple of days : Pat, from "Les Griottes" in the Loire. He is also a winemaker who makes these true wines with none of the modern additives. The good side with sharing a visit with this kind of visitor is that you get a prime opportunity to taste some wines that he doesn't propose to everybody.

Pat (les Griottes) and Philippe JambonI will hardly forget this tasting with Philippe Jambon, Pat, and a couple of cavistes from Toulouse (le Volcan): we went through 6 different 15-liter jars of natural, sweet Chardonnay that have been quietly living their own life in his cellar since 2000. Sweet white wine is one thing, but UNSULPHURED ones are mostly unfindable gems. And here I am with the two guys who in France can make such wines. These wines are alive, every single glass jar here tells a different story, as each of the wines has taken a different route. As we enjoy and marvel about all this deep complexity and aromas, the two here agree to say that paradoxally, these sort of wines can't go out of the cellar because they're too alive and unpredictable. A blind tasting would rocket them to the top of their pairs, but respectable restaurants (and consumers) prefer the easy certitudes of well-known sweet whites, which have been stabilized before bottling.
About the Loire sweet whites for example, since the heavy chaptalization and sulphuration era took off in the 1960's, the consumer demand dropped because people somehow felt that these wines had lost something in the process. Philippe Jambon compares the problem to a skier who would go to the hospital before skiing and ask a doctor to put plasters on his legs "just in case I break my leg"...Of course, he'll thus not ski well and will not really enjoy his sport, but he would feel "safe"...That's about the same weird philosophy that prevails in the use of SO2, they say, and it's valid for all the wines in fact : what they've gained in "security", they've lost in life.A Unique Experience : Natural Sweet Chardonnay 2000It all started, he says, with the new era of commercial intermediaries after WW2. The distributors slipped themselves between the vigneron and the consumer and lobbied to eliminate the risks inherent with transportation and storing conditions. Before that, the wine was not submitted to these constraints and thus did not need these additions. Since WW2 the vignerons have progressively turned their vineyards into magic milk-cows, but the wine lost its appeal and now the demand having dropped, many of them are forced to reconsider the way they think the whole thing.
__1 Chard 2000. Nice golden turbidity. Blood-orange aromas. Residual sugar in the mouth, with freshness and exceptional acidity. Nose of the empty glass : so beautiful...
__2 Chard 2000 (other jar). Clear, gold. Neat. Morello cherry. No sucrosity, very mineral.
__3 Chard 2000 (other jar). Very dry wine also, but with a bit more sugar maybe. Was tasting like truffle not long ago, he says. Pat exclaims himself : underwood, forest, this is life !... Philippe says that Chardonnay is like a nice girl : this variety can be beautiful everywhere, all over the world, but here this wine wouldn't have come to exist if they hadn't forgotten some grapes by accident on the vines in 2000. They picked these leftover grapes in november 2000 just to see what they might give, and here is the result...
__ 4 Chard 2000 (other jar). Clear yellow. Nose like a Savagin from the Jura ! intensity in the mouth, no sugar at all. Peat aroma, he says. Even something close to whisky. Pat marvels : all the sugar was mineralized and cristallized.Philippe Jambon in one of his vineyardsAfter the other visitors left, Philippe Jambon drove me under the light drizzle to several of his vineyards, which are spread on the hills nearby. He and his wife started from scratch in 1997 by choosing good terroirs among the ones that were on sale. Both kept their job (in the restaurant business) at the beginning, now he works full time on his estate while his wife keeps her job. They hadn't found the house with the facility immediately (and the priority was the vineyards) and the first years were arduous, but he kept his goal of organic farming and unchaptalized, untartaricized, unsulphured wines, and while he could see some of his conventional neighbors abandon their vineyards, he found a market for his own wines, proving that quality and truth in wine was a solution for the region's woes. We pass near such an unkempt vineyard plot, along one of his Gamay vineyards. During the bubble years it was in full-blown production with conventional farming. Now the owner probably wonders if it's worth to continue. Philippe Jambon tipped his friends (who also farm organic) in case it goes for sale, because he would prefer to have such neighbors than a conventional grower.Les Roches Noires vineyardFurther, we look at his plots in the Coteau de Balmont, a slope where he first bought 1/2 hectare of Gamay, and then additional plots nearby, including bare plots which are not yet replanted. The whole slope is topped by woods and bordered with hedges which is ideal for an organic farming. To plow, he doesn't drive the tractor through the vineyard, but parks it at one end of the rows and uses a winch to pull the plow all the way up, thus avoiding to pack the earth with the heavy machinery. There's just one person (usually himself) on the plow to guide it all along. He left the grass all summer and then either plowed or just cut the grass every other row. Some leaves are red because of the bad weather and related diseases, the vineyard having no conventional spraying to fix the problem. His Gamay cuvées La Tranche and Les Ganivets (labelled as Vin de Table), that I discovered in a tasting a few months ago, come from the plots on this slope, with a south-southeast exposition. Great terroirs indeed...We come across many uprooted vineyards and it looks like many growers decided to cash on the European Union incentives to limit the production, but the sad thing is that these uprooted plots are often on the best terroirs, while the high-yield vineyards on the flatland keep producing. EC farm policy, go figure...
Further, we reach his Roches Noires plot, located right under a hill with a huge bulging, black manganese rock, and surrounded by woods. Gamay here too. Manganese, which can be found in the sub-soil of the Morgon and Moulin à Vent areas, is often credited for the qualities of these wines, and here, its concentration is even thicker. He bought the plot here in 2003, with the house and the chai.The Beaujolais-Burgundy divideNearby, we drive on a gravel road which materialize the odd Beaujolais-Burgundy divide here: On the right lie the Saint Véran and the Pouilly-Fuissé Chardonnay vineyards, from the Burgundy Appellations, and you can virtually touch the prosperity on this side of the road, and on the left lie the Gamay vineyards of the Beaujolais, many of theml being abandonned and visibly struggling to stay afloat... When the Appellation drives the destiny...This is also an area where some of these Burgundy Chardonnays are more southern than the northernmost Gamays of this part of Beaujolais. The Burgundy plots also have a limestone soil while the Beaujolais side here is more granitic.Back in the cellar, Philippe Jambon offers me to taste several of his wines:
__1 Jambon Blanc, Table Wine. Chardonnay 2005. From the vineyard just in front of the house [pic on top].
__2 La Grande Bruyère 2005. Chardonnay. Very clear wine. Ready to be bottled, he says. No SO2, like all of his wines since 2003, neither during the vinification or at bottling. He says that the small millesimes get the refineness and the great millesimes make massive wines. As the wines are not filtered, there a natural oxydoreduction resulting of the interaction between the air and the lees, leading to a natural protection of the wines.
__3 La Grande Bruyère, Chardonnay 2003. Liquorice with dill, and menthol notes. Flowers also. Very classy and ample in the mouth. Great wine. yields : 30 hectoliter/ha. He has 5 casks of this wine.
__4 Roche Noire 2006, Gamay. THe bought the Roche Noire vineyard in 2003. Nose : candy, spices, fruits. Concentration. He says that it would be better to wait a bit more before releasing it.
__5 La Tranche Pressée, Gamay. There was 2 casks of La Tranche, and La Tranche Pressée is the 20% of the wine resuting from the press juice. Nose : pepper, something like spicy fruits. Very close to the gingerbread. Really superb, this is La Tranche to the power of 4...
Baltaille 2005, Gamay. Will probably be labelled as Table wine. From a 20-hectoliter vat. Chocolate and liquorice, here. A blend from two plots (Balmont and Bataille) that we saw at the beginning of our tour. Very dark wine. Lots of character and concentration. He says that the millesime is enormous, but he waits till he is sure that the wine did everything id has to do and went throughall his long fermentation...
Philippe and Catherine Jambon raise three children in their beautiful village.

Philippe Jambon wines are exported to the US (Jenny & Francois selections) and Japan, and can be found in a number of artisan-wine cavistes all over France..

Philippe JambonVers L'Eglise, Chasselas 71570Phone +33 3 85 35 17 57[email protected]

Comments

[hikalu]

I've heard of him, but haven't tasted yet. I will taste when I find. I liked the photo of The Beaujolais-Burgundy divide. It's a border of destiny.
I happened to drink one of Les Griottes's last weekend. It was poivriere. This wine was seal with crown cap. It had little carbonated and little sweetness. I liked it.

[Jon Lodge]

So when are we planning a trip for a personal tasting on the premises?