Chateau Meylet (St Emilion)

Michel Favard Opening a BottleChateau Meylet, Saint-Emilion (Bordeaux)
The Bordeaux region is not the first French wine region you think of when you look for biodynamic farming. That said, the wineries of the region have been more and more practicing sustanainable agriculture, if not full-blown organic farming, especially the high-end wineries where it is well understood that a healthy vineyard is the base for a good wine. This 2001 Wine Business article paints an interesting picture of the region in this regard, even if since then more wineries have adapted their vineyard management.
But on the whole, the Bordeaux region is not a hotbed of organic farming. There are still, though, a few isolated vignerons in the Bordeaux area who are pioneering the biodynamic way in spite of adverse weather conditions like rain and humidity. Michel Favard is one of them and he makes wine out of a small vineyard surface in St-Emilion (less than 2 hectares). We met him in his beautiful house in Jugazan, on the entre-deux-mers side of the Dordogne, 15 kilometers from Chateau Meylet and its vineyards. He lives in this house where he also rents a few "chambres d'hôte" (bed & breakfast) to visitors. Note this address (les Sources, Jugazan) if you visit come to Bordeaux vor VINEXPO, it is not that far from Bordeaux and the accomodations are so scarce at this time of the year in the region that most "chambres d'hôte" are booked.
I had tasted some of his wines in Paris last year if I remember, and I was particularly impressed by his Chateau Meylet, Serpes 1998, a beautiful wine in the mouth and an unfiltered-unfined, no-aditives and no SO2 wine which went through a 15 to 20 months elevage on its lees.

Along the 1,8-hectare Vineyard at Chateau MeyletChateau Meylet is located at La Gomerie (see map) near Saint Emilion, and as it is kilometers away from where he lives now, Michel Favard first exposes how he works and views the winemaking process, and he opened a few bottles at the end. We visited the winery the next day.
The Saint-Emilion Appellation is spread over 9 villages. Michel Favard says that the Appellations on the labels have lost their initial meaning because the soils have been damaged over the years by intensive chemical sprayings and treatments (weed killers, fertilizers...). The nature of these soils have radically changed compared when the Appellation zones were set. This change to chemical viticulture took place after WW2. He says that there are very few vignerons who changed their viticulture management to adopt the organic way, compared to the Loire where the trend is pushed by a new generation of vignerons. He says that he is a member of the organic/natural-wine group AVN. This group shares the same philosophy and to be a member you need to be parrainned by a vigneron-member who knows how you work, not only in the vineyard but in the cellar. People who are part of the group farm organic and don't use machines at the harvest. He says that as organic-farming has become a marketing argument, there is sometimes a dysfunctionment between an actual organic vineyard-management and vinification practices that still include the usual chemistry and manipulations in some newly-converted estates.Chateau Meylet : the Chateau and WineryThere was a time a few years ago in the 80s' for example as he was already farming organic, but he still did some barrel sulphuting by burning a wick even though only 1,25gr. In 1985 he discovered Rudolf Steiner's Biodynamy and felt immediately that this was the right way to work. In 1987 he began to apply Steiner's biodynamic practices in his vineyards, but without any certification. His small, 1,8-hectare vineyard around Chateau Meylet is located in the middle of the Saint-Emilion Appellation at a place named "la Gomerie" (see map), near Chateau Laroze, Clos des Jacobins, Chateau La Gomerie and Chateau Franc-Mayne, on a second plateau on the way of Libourne, on a not-so-high altitude. When he funded the Chateau-Meylet winery in 1976-1978, he had another job at the time in the printing-machine business, and he started the estate from scratch. These vineyards were farmed by growers (including his father) and the grapes were sold to The Coop then. When his father retired, Michel Favard gave him some help and took care of the vineyard, and he felt more and more involved in this life of vigneron. Chateau Meylet (the formal estate) was officially started in 1978 but he had no facility or "chateau" then, and he vinified somewhere else.Michel Favard in the vathouse of Chateau MeyletIn 1987 he worked at his winery full time and took time to explore Steiner's agriculture principles. He says that when he discoverd biodynamy, it's like what he read and experimented was something he expected for a long time, and all these cosmological and stellar implications on the life processes of the plants and living beings spoke strongly to him. He remembers that a colleague vigneron came at his estate with a dozen other vintners during the Vinexpo wine fair for some sort of "Vinexpo off", and this guy who was from another french wine region was so puzzled by this farming that he decided to make a try on one hectare back in his estate. He saw a striking difference in this vineyard after a year, but the resulting wine, which was vinified separately, was what convinced him. This vigneron happened to be already farming organic, but the biodynamic practices had really brought a plus that he noticed immediately in the wines.
His vineyard which is 60-year old on average is planted with 70 % Merlot and the rest in Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and a little bit of Malbec. The grape varieties are complanted, meaning the Merlot and Cabernet are planted on the same vineyard, which explains the better maturity of the late varieties, while the early varieties are carried along. Some how, the complantation makes the late varieties less late, and the early varieties a bit lazier. As he replants regularly to replace the old vines, he adds more Cabernet for the taste and the fruit. Michel Favard shows the Harvest-Box Holder that he DesignedThe harvest is a stage where he takes a meticulous care to have the best possible grapes only, at the end. First, if there is some morning dew on the grapes, he uses a wind machine to dry them up before beginning the harvest. The pickers use boxes, and he designed a box-holder to avoid the contact of the bottom of the box with the ground and the dirt. He tried several designs and materials and opted for wood instead of metal because it was lighter and stronger. See the picture of this box holder above (if you copy it for your own boxes and pickers, just credit him !) When a box is full, it is hauled and piled up with the other boxes but thanks to this wooden holder, no unwanted earth or clay can taint the underneath of the box, and thus, the grapes of the next box. Plus, each picker has his attributed boxes with a letter to recognize them, so that if unwanted grapes or debris are found in a given box, it can be traced to a picker who will be informed of the corrections to do. The pickers have the instruction to cut only the group of grapes that are deemed good. This handling of the harvest is much more costly than a "regular" hand harvest : 4 or 5 times more expensive, he says. When the boxes arrive at the winery, a Belgian friend checks them and puts the clusters one by one in the destemmer. Next stage, the sorting table to spot the leaves or small vegetal debris that could have sneaked in. Michel Favard has also taken an extra step to avoid any harmful contamination between the arriving boxes and the vatroom : both are separated by a wall with a single small window-trap from which the boxes are passed. The final selection of healthy grapes are then put into clean boxes which are elevated over the wooden vats. These are 50-hectoliter Taransaud tronconic vats, fitted with a large metal opening on the top. Of course, no yeasts nor SO2 are added with the grapes, and that's why (if no SO2) the grapes must be in perfect condition and clean.The Top of the Tronconic VatsUntil 1999 he did long macerations and from 1999 he decided to separate the press wine and to raise it apart. He made shorter vinifications than before and if possible had the malolactic fermentation proceed in the casks. The conversation deviates on the standardization that make many Bordeaux wines to have a similar taste. He speaks about Claude Bourguignon who quit the INRA where he worked and decided tpmake his own research on the soils. He later discovered that there was more soil life in the Sahara than in the modern-agriculture. soils. He says that as most estates hire enologists to vinify, this means the fear of risk means the use of yeasts, enzymes, vitamins and anti-oxydants. He remembers that in 1999 there has been severe hailstorms in a geographical corridor and many people including himself were affected. He notes that nearly all the estates including the Crus Classés immediately cleaned the harvest machines and began to harvest without delay. This means that to compensate with the lack of maturity they added many products during the vinification. For his own vineyard, he prefered to wait, but it rained then to worsen the picture and he lost even more grapes, with final yields of about 4 or 5 hectoliter/hectare, but with this tiny harvest he succeeded to make a very nice wine (and a true one). This is the year when he initiated his short macerations. He had regulation coils installed in the bottom of the vats, they allow him to start the alcoholic fermentation to start when the vat fills up (he cools a bit the bottom of the vat). He vinified fully without SO2 beginning in 1996. He also says that when the wine hasn't been used to SO2, it doesn't ask for it, sort of. He uses an inert gaz to protect the wine, Aligal #12 which is a mix of nitrogen and CO2.
The blens are made in stainless vats (the one equipped with Aligal dispenser). The wine then gets 18 to 20 months to mature in casks, 20% to 40% in new casks depending of the millesime. He just uses a sulphur wick at the last racking. The wine stays all this time on its lees, and at the end of the long cask stage the wine has virtually "eaten" most of the lees. The last racking is made from cask to cask, before making the blend. At the end he gets 3 or 4 mgr of free sulphur. The total sulphur must be 4 or 5, maybe less. Once bottled, he keeps some millesimes a few years in the cellar. Right now he sells the 1997 and the 1998.
He necer filtered his wines but used to fine them with the traditionnal egg whites. Then in 1992 as the year was not favorable and the wine was feable, he thought it would be even worse if he fined it so ha abstained for the first time and the result was so nice that he never fined again since then. He remembers that once, Marcel Lapierre had made a test for several vintners and he had organized a blind tasting of several versions of the same wine, like filtered-and-fined-sulphured, unfiltered-but-fined-and-sulphured and unfiltered-unfined_unsulphured and a few more combinations, and the unfined-unfiltered-unsulphured was so obviously better than any other version that everyone was convinced. Back to this pivotal 1992 wine : when this initially-feable wine was commercialized and sold, Michel Favard had an unexpected feedback about it, as a journalist had it with his dinner at the table of Chef Christian Constant, and was so enthousiast that he wrote a piece about it in a food/wine section. The irony is that at the time this wine didn't get the Grand Cru Appellation, the agreement commission finding it too this and too that, and the wine was probably too different from the other standard wines that passed on the commission table. The tasters in these commissions are usually composed of a peer-vigneron, an enologist, a wine broker (courtier en vin) and a négociant, but often one of them is missing and there are only 3 people. So, the 1992 got only the St Emilion Appellation but not the Grand Cru that he usually had, but it still sold at the same price, his clients knowing what they buy. He got also harassed by this same agreement commission in 2000 and 2001 but this time he decided to resist and presented his wine again (you have to pay each time). This time as retaliation, his wine was downgraded as Table Wine, so he sued the INAO and had to go in front of the Bordeaux tribunals several times. The matter went up to the "Conseil D'Etat", a very high judiciary committee, and he won each time even when the other side appealed the ruling. That is a costly fight to resist the Agreement decisions... Whatever, in 2003 and 2004 he was also downgraded (smells like vicious retaliations) and this time he didn't fight back so the wines were labbeled in Vin de Table (table wine). How the wine clergy makes everything possible to keep wines formated...
__ Chateau Meylet St Emilion Grand Cru 1997. Evoluted color. Leather aromas. Jammy red fruits. Nice length, B. says, meat-juice retro-aromas. Time to drink I think. 23 Euro.
__Chateau Meylet St Emilion Grand Cru "les Serpes" 1998. The color is more intense here. Needs prior aeration. A bit of reduction in the beginning on the nose. Very nice mouth. That is the one that took my attention when I first tasted his wines in Paris.
__Chateau Meylet St Emilion Grand Cru 1996. Nose : underwood, mushrooms, eloluted aromas, truffle. Mouth : well-integrated tannins. Animal notes in the retro-olfaction.
__Chateau Meylet St Emilion Grand Cru 1995. Very sunny year, except in september. We swirl our glass for a long time, this wine is awaking after a long time. After a few minutes, it opens and we really feel the aromas coming out of the glass. Nice feel in the mouth and complexity on the nose. "mMagnifique", B. says. intense. That will be also the best one of the flight for me.
Chateau Meylet produces 5000 to 6000 bottles a year. The estate has been temporarily rented to Stéphane derenoncourt since 2005, and Mr Derenoncourt makes his "Trois Origines" wine here. Michel Favard's son is expected to take the reins of the winery later this year.
There are also a few "chambres d'hôte" "(rooms) to rent at Chateau Meylet, and the location allows the visitor to walk along some of the best estates of the region.
Chateau Meylet wines can be puchased at Caves Augé, 116 Bd Haussmann in Paris.Chateau MeyletLa Gomerie 33330 St-Emilionphone (Michel Favard in Jugazan) +33 (0)5 57 84 76 10

Comments

[A Facebook User]

Michel, it is very refreshing to read about your beliefs and passion behind your wines. When visiting Paris I purchased your 2000 Chateau Meylet and cannot wait to taste all the hard work that has gone into this wine. How much longer could this wine age? I look forward to hearing from you and if I am ever in the neighbourhood I would love to visit your winery. Stay true to yourself.