Filtered/Unfiltered

Fruits from the Garden Filtered/Unfiltered wine : this is a topic that brings lots of debates, questions and images, and speaking of images, I think that this picture of simple fruits and vegetables picked in a garden, as well as the following pictures, can make a good symbolic illustration of another duality, the one opposing the natural/real wines (often summed up as "unfiltered") with the technical/industrial wines that swamp the market. These fruits and vegetables above have in common with their wine equivalents the fact that weren't pushed or sprayed, and they riped quietly on the tree or on the ground and they reflect the vintage and the occasional accidents that mother nature brougt onto them, like scars, insect bites or drought-induced small size. If you're used to what the supermarket selects for you, the first bite may be a surprise, like some can very acidic (that's why you can keep them through the winter), but there's the taste, and at the end you feel that you ate something real and good for you.
Speaking of fruit or vegetable species, here is another small digression that I would like to make about an odd "French paradox" : I learned recently that not only are our modern commercial vegetable species very limited in number, but also that the European Union and the French Administration prevent BY LAW farmers or gardeners to sell seeds from ancient fruit- or vegetable species not "registered in the catalog" of the French Agricultural Administration. How strange as it sounds, France is keeping a catalog (?!) of a limited number of fruit/vegetable species that you can buy/sell the seeds of... Really amazing. Just search for "carotte" (carrot) in the aforementioned catalog and you will find only 64 varieties listed when there are some 400 ancient varieties in France. The GNIS is the French agricultural body which is responsible for this Orwellian catalog. Here is a link (in french) to a page with figures about the autorized species). It seems quite counterproductive for France, considering its supposed love for quality food products to prevent ancient, minor or nearly-extinct vegetable seeds species to be sold, but this is what it does, and continuing such a short-sighted policy could lead to the loss of these ancient species that are part of the agricultural heritage of the continent. Imagine a country where the only wines available would be Gallo's or Castel's (the French for Gallo), that's something similar that the French Agricultural Administration is putting in place on the vegetable/fruit front, as only a handfull of selected and commercial seeds are de facto allowed and promoted... A militant group of French seed-farmers named Kokopelli also notes in one its article about the history of this catalog that the US and Canada don't have such a catalog by law and that seed companies there sell a huge number of non-hybrid seed species, most of them ancient (non-clones) varieties (the details about North America are in the text in red, last third of the page). About the American seeds companies, see also this page by Jack of Fork & Bottle.
Note also that the GNIS even sued Kokopelli for selling ancient-varieties' seeds, which sounds like witch-hunting (have you ever seen the movie 1984 ?). That's a story that doesn't fit with the usual New-World/Old-World clichés...

Apples in the Fruit Aisle These are the fruit equivalents of many well-crafted wines of our modern times : everything here has been squared to fit the mold : size, color, taste (the hardest part of the job, but the engineers have worked hard on it), all this being delivered in time and in big volumes on the market. Here, no scars, no insect bites, but a neat label on a clean skin. Of course, that means a very different type of "life" for these apples compared with the odd-shaped ones of the picture at the top. Forget the quiet burgeoning, the simple diet of sun and occasional water, even less the endless ripening and natural falling on the ground. But you know all that already, and this is probably the big difference with what the consumer knows about the fruits and vegetables that he buys in the supermarkets and what he doesn't know (or doesn't want to know) about the daily wines that he sips. Alice Feiring noted rightly in a debate (on Eric Asimov's blog of the NY Times) how "Food lovers aroung me are accepting a level of processing in their wine glass they would never accept on their plates. This is a disconnect I find fascinating".
There's another common misrepresentation, which is to think that natural-winemaking is something somehow limited to an unruly group of hairy French rebels, when actually most top-tier estates of Bordeaux and Burgundy discreetly followed suit in the last decades (some of them even never parted from the organic-management/natural-winemaking way in the first place) after beginning to implement a quasi-organic viticulture management in the vineyard. The estates who rely the most on biotech additives are usually the mid-tier and lower-tier wineries who think they can find a shortcut to quality.Filtered & Unfiltered EdelzwickerSo long with the digressions and the symbolicly-charged images... Speaking of Filtration, we occasionally have the rare opportunity to taste both the filtered and unfiltered versions of the same wine, and I happened to find in the excellent artisan-wine shop "La Cave des Papilles" in the rue Daguerre in Paris, two such twins side to side on the shelves. But forget the scarred apple/labelled apple images here, because both of these wines are natural wines made without biotech additives. These wines are two versions of Edelzwicker made by Bruno Schueller (Gerard Schueller & Fils). Edelzwicker is a minor Alsace Appellation, the only Alsace still-wine made from a blend of several varieties, and btw also the only one to be bottled in one-liter bottles. It is a simple, popular wine, which is often fruity, pleasant and affordable. The Schueller's Edelzwicker for example costs only some 6 or 7 Euro, which is a real bargain when you taste the wine and consider how the wine is made, just think : it puts the 75cl volume at 5 Euro.... This is what I consider an unknown gem of Alsace and I have been buying this Gerard Schueller wine from time to time at Lavinia (but they don't seem to have it anymore) or at the Caves des Papilles. As you can check on the picture, the bottle on the left is nearly cristall-clear while the one on the right is very hazy to say the least, with also a vague brown patch of sediments in the middle which sticked to the inside of the bottle. Both are 2006 wines but the filtered version also holds some 2005. Bruno Schueller usually filters part of his Edelzwicker bottlings because some of his customers are still wary of the haze, particularly unsettling in a white wine.Unfiltered and FilteredThe picture says it all : see the clarity on the wine on the right (save the condensation on the outside of the glass) and the misty, almost browny look of the one on the left, plus the gas bubbles that kling to the inside of the glass...I called Bruno Schueller before opening the bottles and he told me that there are slight differences in terms of varieties and millesime between the two wines : The unfiltered is a 2006 wine made from a majority of Pinot Auxerrois plus a bit of Chasselas and Sylvaner, while the filtered version is a blend of 2005 and 2006 wines, blends of about 50% of Pinot Blanc, some 25-30% of Pinot Noir 2006 pressed like a white, and a bit of Gewurztraminer, Sylvaner and Chasselas. He said that the filtered wine had more richness in the mouth than the unfiltered, because of the Pinot Noir. This Pinot Noir was pressed like a white and added to the blend because it came from grapes that were damaged with botrytis and sorted out at the harvest. Later, after the fermentation, the Pinot-Noir batch never cleared, it remained so dark that he decided to filter the whole blend. In general, he is reluctant to throw away unfit grapes and he usually uses them for the simpler Edelzwicker, or also for his "Edel de Noël" (Christmas Edelzwicker), a limited edition Edelzwicker, sort of, that you can find in a limited-number of well-connected cavistes (including les Papilles of the rue Daguerre) during a short period. He doesn't make this Edel de Noël every year, 2002 was for example the year that he made the biggest volume of it, about 700 bottles, but there will be only about 50 or 60 liters of it from the 2007 millesime, so check the shop frequently... His Edelzwicker wines are all fermented in big-capacity foudres (15-30 hectoliter).
The wines :
__Unfiltered Edelzwicker 2006 : Hazy, rusty color. Perly in the mouth. Aromas of wheat before harvest, ripeness. Some honey, says B. Also jammy apples and pears. A bit short in the mouth. The second glass minutes later had some putrefaction smell on the nose as more gas was coming out, but the mouth was much wider and deeper and gave lots of pleasure.
__Filtered Edelzwicker 2005/2006. Very clear gold with an imperceptible hint of green. Very very aromatic, both on the nose and in the mouth. Balsamic notes, maybe eucalyptus. B. feels something like valerian or similar herbal notes. The mouth is rich and perfectly in accord. Very nice wine. I'm puzzled and my penchant for unfiltered wine is taken aback. Please, Mr Schueller, keep using your damaged grapes this way, because I'm sure they're damaged on the outside only...

Comments

[lagramiere]

Salut Bertrand! Excellent post, with great photographic examples. It is amazing that the French government restricts the sale of "variétés anciennes." Kokopelli isn't far from us here and it's one of our favorite places to get seeds. It's funny, an Alsatian friend of ours and fellow vigneron here, always has Schueller's Edelzwicker as their "house wine," so we've been lucky enough to taste both versions too! Keep up you wonderful blog, I truly enjoy it, especially the Parisian wine bar recommendations!

[Isaac Rivera]

Hi Bertrand. This is my first post, though my wife and I have been enjoying your blog for several weeks now.

This is a very good point you are making. My wife and I live in Brooklyn, NY, USA, where we belong to an organic farm coop. This means that for some 29 weeks of the year we can pick up a share of the farm's weekly harvest on a nearby church. This coop has an online forum where members exchange recipes etc. Invariably on some weeks members will complain about the cosmetics of the fruit or vegetables. Oh they were too bruised or oh they had some caterpillars. These comments usually come from people who are trying to eat better, but were born and raised in the city. I grew up in a dairy farm in Puerto Rico and my wife on Tarragona, Spain. Those of us who were not lucky enough to experience fruit ripening on trees and picking it up yourself when ready do not understand what an agricultural product is. It is a living, breathing, organism that transforms and concentrates some of the energy of the surrounding terroir into edible form. Of course infected or pest-ridden fruit or vegetables are a sign of negligent or inept agricultural practices, but some blemishes and even bugs are natural. Not only natural, bug a good sign of health. If I see a caterpillar among the broccoli heads, I know that farm is REALLY organic and has healthy soil, water, and air.

We are all deformed by supermarket cosmetics. Even organic markets display perfect fruit all the time. This is the main reason, in my opinion, organic produce is 3 times as expensive to buy in this place. Grocers discard all the fruit that do not look perfect, but then, or course have to pass on the cost to the consumer.

Here in New York we are lucky enough to have a wine retailer that is pushing the natural wine movement, The Moore Brothers, and they only see natural wines whose producers they know personally. Wines are guaranteed to be at 13 deg Celsius from the cellar to the store. The store itself is kept at 13 deg all year round. We have been having a great time discovering all these bottled treasures and sharing them with friends.

Again, thanks for another interesting post.

[hikalu]

The pictures of Apples are a kinda shocked of the difference. It's like that some mans are surprised when they see a woman wearing no makeup at all. some guys say so. kinda a joke? might be...

About Bruno Schueller, I really wanna taste his wine using the damaged grapes!!