Alain & Isabelle Hasard (Burgundy)

Isabelle & Alain HasardAluze (population 250), Cotes Chalonnaise (Burgundy)
The Côtes du Couchois (named from the small town of Couches) is one of these largely-ignored Burgundy Appellations, it borders the Côte Chalonnaise on its north-western wing (another lesser-known Appellation). A mountainous area with a mix of woods, cow prairies delimited by hedges, quiet villages and vineyards, the Cotes du Couchois is wildly beautiful, and driving along its steep and narrow side-roads is just a pleasure by itself, especially compared to the busy plains of Beaune. Alain Hasard began his wine activity in St Sernin du Plain in the Côtes du Couchois, where he and his wife Isabelle started their winery in 1997. The house, which they found before the vineyards, was located on the Place de l'Abbaye square in Saint-Sernin and the name of the estate was found : Champs de l'Abbaye, a play with chants (the songs for which the abbeys are well known) and champs (fields). Alain Hasard was not raised as a vigneron, he wasn't even from Burgundy and he discovered wine and gastronomy while working in restaurants in Montpellier as a student. To make it short, this all led him first to become a caviste, near Paris first and then in Limoges, but ultimately his discovery of Burgundy made him want to start a new life there making wine. The landscapes of Burgundy, the people working in the vineyard, he says with a smile, touched both of them as they came to live in Beaune, there was some sort of sensuality in this region that they wanted to be part of. They looked for a landing spot and chose the Côtes-du-Couchois. Alain Hasard was to be the one that would put in the spotlight this little-known part of Burgundy. In the early years, Isabelle who was a trained nurse, kept her job in the hospital to help pay the bills. The humility of the Côtes-du-Couchois Appellation (compared with the better-known zones of the region) made the area a very affordable start, and Alain Hasard began with 4,5 hectares of Passetoutgrain, i.e. Gamay and Pinot Noir.

Aluze - Alain Hasard pointing to his vineyards below the villageSince Alain Hasard moved to Aluze in the Côte Chalonnaise (just at the border with the Côtes du Couchois), he took up other vineyards (Côte Chalonnaise, Mercurey and Rully) and doesn't make anymore wine on the Côtes du Couchois, but what he did for this little Appelation in just a few years must be mentionned. The Côtes-du-Couchois Appellation was created in 2000 and in this area where the vignerons still sell in bulk at low price to the Negoce, he applied a rigorous organic farm-management in the vineyard (officially in organic farming since 1999) and his low-intervention red wines surprised the wine critics. Blind tasted, his Couchois wines were often ahead of some top-names in Mercurey or Côte de Beaune. His neat, terroir-driven wines suddenly put the Côtes du Couchois on the map. In 2003 they had three red cuvées there, based on the three particular types of soil found in the Couchois. From 2005, they felt some routine and jumped at the opportunity to take some vineyards (0,5 hectare) in Rully, with Chardonnay (2005 saw the beginning of a crisis in the region and this led to more opportunities to find available vineyards). This opened their apetite as from the start they dreamed to work on Communal Appellations. They had looked long before here and there (Maranges, Santenay, even Côte Chalonnaise) but being outsiders with no local help they failed to get vineyards there. The viticulture crisis that started in 2005-2006 helped a lot to open the doors. In 2006 they found this estate in Aluze and there was no other contender for the purchase. The estate had some vineyards on Mercurey (one hectare) and on Côte Chalonnaise, which added to their Rully plot. Just at the border of the small village of Aluze which sits atop a hill at 360 m elevation, Alain Hasard shows us the Appellations around : Mercurey in the far below the woods, Côte Chalonnaise just below the village, and Côtes du Couchois on the other side.Showing his Côte-Chalonnaise plots below AluzeA few meters below the vilage of Aluze, we walk along his Côte-Chalonnaise vineyards. Named "les Roches Pendantes" (Hanging Rocks, because there's an surfacing rock-table above the vineyard at the limit of the village), they lie on a gentle slope (exposed on south) facing the vista. When it's warm in summer, they even have a local type of cicadas here. These particular vineyards are rented, not owned. Right now, they've been cutting the canes on the vines and they will burn the bundles later. He doesn't use any wheeled burner and remarks that the workers using these wheeled-stoves often use thick petrol-oil to start the fire, which is polluting the soil. The vineyard on the right is about 20 years old and the Clos des Roches Pendantes on the left [pic on left] was planted in 1959 (50 years). He uses very light machinery to plow his vineyards, a small tunnel/hovering plower and an ultralight caterpillar-tractor (80 kg and 70 cm width !) to plow without compressing the earth beneath the vines (it was alas away for repair and I have no pic to show). They plant at 12500 vines per hectare and the Clos for example, where many vines miss here and there, will be replanted this year with massal-selection vines at this very high density.He says that the good result of having a high density like 12 500 vines/hectare or higher (he knows a vigneron -I'll not tell who because the INAO doesn't authorize such high density- who planted at 18 000 vines/hectare) is not higher yields but the fact that they have the same yields evenly distributed on a larger quantity of vines. The pruning has to be a bit shorter in these conditions and the high density translates in smaller clusters and smaller grapes. He says that as the color resides in the skin of the grape, the smaller the grapes, the better the skin/juice ratio, and you get richer, more intense substances in the wine. Les Roches Pendantes (Côte Chalonnaise) - Aluze in the backgroundThey're only the two of them to work in the vineyard, himself and his wife Isabelle (they have 5 children to take care of too !). Their total vineyard surface including the Mercurey and the Rully is 6 hectares (they sold their last Côtes-du-Couchois plot), which is at the same time small and big if you consider they do all the hard work themselves. They also had a Hautes-Côtes-de-Beaune plot they didn't communicate much about.
Aluze sits on a tumultuous geological crossroads and faults with strikingly different subsoils. Trias clays similar to the Couchois on one side, Hercynian rock table on another, and on the eastern side of Aluze, Oxfordian marls from the mid-Jurassic era, which are thick with limestone. All these different soils yield completely different wines.
Walking back to the village and the winery, he says that Aluze is home to 7 vignerons living off their winery but only two of them bottle their wines, the other sell in bulk either to the Negoce or to the nearby Buxy Coop (which is btw a rather good coop). He says that while on the whole they met a relatively good welcome in the Côte Chalonnaise (where another passionnate vintner was viewed as a plus for the Appellation), it was much more difficult in the Couchois where they were resented as being too different by the other vignerons. He says that people over there somehow felt through this difference of work & philosophy that their own high-yield, intensive farming and the related vinification-practices were doomed in a near future. The fact that this confused and painful awakaning was caused by an outsider was an additionnal ordeal for them. Alain Hasard in the vatroomThe vat room is a very old building with exceptionally thick beams and framework, as it was originally roofed with thick, flat stones like it used to be in the region. This type of roofing weighs about a metric ton per square-meter and the carpenters of the past built a frame accordingly (this building has a 130-square-meter roof surface) and the wall were also very thick. What you see on the ceiling is the first step of the future insulated ceiling. If Alain Hasard wines are non-interventionist, he firmly beleives in the importance of the temperature factor and considers that a careful control of temperatures is a central element to make wine. There is no underground cellar now and he may have to dig one, if he he can, because he may fall immediately on the rock table on which the village sits. There are about ten open wooden tronconic vats in the vatroom, all made by Grenier, the artisanal Burgundy cooperage. They weren't in the winery initially and he purchased them all or brought them along from his former Couchois winery. The PressThe press looks new because he formerly used a similar vertical press lended by a friend. This type of press means lots of manual work, particularly to fill and to empty it. That's his job, Isabelle has no part in it. He has another press just for the whites. The good thing with having two presses, one for the reds and one for the whites is that it allows them to bring the grapes in according to the maturity of each plot and not because of a time window in the press schedule. When you have only one press, the vigneron is often going to harvest the whites first, not always for maturity reasons but because pressing whites after reds asks for a thorough cleaning of the press. The harvest began sept 26th in 2008, starting with the reds, and it ended oct 4th. The sorting stage is made on the spot, in the vineyards. The pickers were a bit more than 15 during the first days, and less than 10 at the end, on the smaller plots. They need 8 or 9 days to pick the whole 6 hectares. They don't want to rush the harvest and only do it if the maturity is right. The surface cask cellar at Champs de L'AbbayeWe then walk into the surface cask cellar, a room filled with casks (only the 2008 reds in this room) where it's quite warm compared with the outside, covering my glasses and camera lens with condensation that I have to wipe repeatedly. He has put some heating and set the temperature of this room at 16° C to let the fermentation go on. He also puts regularly some water on the ground to keep the right humidity. This year he says that there is a tendency to go toward reduction, so if he let the temp at the normal 10° or 11°C the wine would go in reduction, with animal aromas and mercaptans (very detailed article by Jamie Goode) being too present.The vintage 2008 having this tendency, he is very careful and checks often the wine. Several factor intervene but concentrated wines like his (because of low yields and high-density plantation) are more likely to tilt toward reduction. The wines in here are the 2008 reds, the 2007 being already bottled and currently being shipped to the customers. these 2008 reds will be progressively bottled between end of july to early october 2009.
The red grapes are 100% destemmed and during the vat stage there's a pumping-over per day, also a cap-punching in the beginning of the fermentation and then they stop the cap-punching when the alcohol level is right because it brings more extraction which is not what he is looking for. They evolved in their vinification style. Also, he had learned to vinify in Côte-de-Beaune wineries where very refined terroirs like Savigny could allow whole-clusters vinifications, because the stem maturity was often so perfect there. But on the clayish terroir of the Couchois he had to adapt because the phenolic maturity was not always optimal, plus clay brings more tannic wines, so from 2001 they bought a destemmer to Olivier Merlin and soon destemmed the whole harvest. 2003 was another decisive turning point in his vinification practices : this exceptionnal heat-wave year brought dark, black grapes with concentrated juice, so he decided to have no more than 5 to 6-day fermentation stage. Plus it was hot and fermentations started right away and he devatted with still sugar in the juice, but he didn't want more tannins. He lost some juice-volume but got the best quality of it and this vintage was very beautiful with lots of freshness at the same time. So, in the following years, considering that the substance is always concentrated due to the low yields they have (25 hectoliter/hectare, far below the 58 ho/ha allowed) on their vineyards, he decided to keep these short fermentations that he initiated in 2003. Pouring white from a bottleAs said above, the 2003 wines were devatted after only 5-6 days of fermentation with a bit of sugar left, but the sugar were "eaten away" in the casks. He says that while very cautious, he likes to do that, to devat with still a bit of sugar, when the juice density is around 1000/1010. But there's no fixed law that he would follow, it depends how he feels the wine, how it tastes, the fineness of the tannins and every year is a new year. This year for example the wines were extremely refined and they let them longer in the vats and the sugar were eaten there. Alain Hasard likes to be surprised every year, when the wine shows something different. He uses Freud's concept of free-floating attention as the mindset he has when conducting his vinification and even his vineyard management. He loves that state of mind, and samely he remembers a few words that Michel Bettanne lended to Lalou Bize-Leroy (Domaine Leroy) when she said The wine is always right, which he needed years to fully understand. After he began to make wine, he understood what she meant, that the wine, when it is left alive, goes in such or such direction for a reason, even if it doesn't mean letting free rein to the wine, because the end of the road would be vinegar.
Let's taste the wine, he says :
__Bourgogne Aligoté 2007 (white). Vineyards near Aluze (which is really at a crossroads of Appellations). Lemon. Vine-peach also, he says. Refined nose. Some acidity, but with richness and viscosity. The Aligoté was the last vineyard that he harvested in 2007. Still, he says, this is not the best time of the year to taste the wines. He says that there are two time of the year when the wines taste best, it is may-june before it gets too hot, and at autumn. I feel ananas in my empty glass, or some exotic fruit. This Aligoté is the only wine that he vinified in stainless vats. As it's a wine to drink young, he feels a stainless-vat vinification fits well and helps the neat minerality to express itself. He says that what made him adopt biodynamie was when he came through certain wines, for example Noël Pinguet's (Domaine Huet), or Nicolas Joly's (Coulée de Serrant) which had a minerality and a purity that were exceptionnal. He thought then, if biodynamie is behind these wines, that's the way I want to work my vineyards.
__Rully White 2007 les Cailloux. Not far from Aluze also. 0,5 hectare, 25-30-year old vines. Only wild yeasts like for all his vinifications of course. Nice nose, with toasted notes says B. He never filters his wines. In 2007 the wines were a bit hazy so he clay-fined them, which he didn't do in 2006 for example. He says that he is non-interventionist but jokes (that's when he burst in one of his typical laughs - picture on right) that like in education (with five children, he knows...) non-interventionist doen't mean lawless and sometimes you have to put some order. Speaking of his children, aged from 7 to 21, 2 boys, 3 girls, they all work now and then in the vineyard (because they're forced to, he adds with another laugh). B. notes that there's a nice aromatic lenght in the mouth, in spite of the moderate attack in the early mouth. Alain Hasard feels more bergamot, anise and ginger in this wine rather than toasted notes. About the casks, he changed his ways since they left the Cotes-du-Couchois. Over there they used up to 60% new casks. Here in the Côte Chalonnaise (except with the Mercurey but he is on his way to reduce new wood there too) they put it down to 30% maybe. And he works on that question, including about the type of toast and the cooperage style. He works with 4 cooperages, François-Frères, Tonnellerie de Mercurey, Seguin-Moreau and Dargaud-Jaeglé. He found for example that the oak coming from the Jupille forests in the Sarthe département has a very thin grain texture that is very soft on the wine. In the Couchois, they had texture wines and they tried to make rounder wines. In the Côte Chalonnaise, the wines are more spirited, aerial and the wood has to be more in the background (were's speaking of the reds here).
__Côte Chalonnaise, Clos des Roches (Pendantes) 2007 (red). Bottle opened a couple days ago. Very beautiful nose, complexity. Small red fruits like raspberry, spices, santal also (B.). He says that the best would be to wait 2 years at least even if 6-7 years would be even better. The future will say it but they may last 30 years, who knows...2007 was a year with a beautiful summer-like april, and a milder later season. Yields were 30-35 ho/ha that year on Clos des Roches. Empty glass : encence and santal, obviously.
__Côtes du Couchois, Le Clos 2007 (red), planted at 12 500 vines/hectare. Pinot Noir of course. Complexity on the nose. The last bottles, they sold these vineyards. Blackcurrant, Blueberry. B. feels tobacco leaves. Some tannins here, but it's OK and the temperature of the wine is cold. Very dark wine. I'll tell you later where some of these last Hasard Couchois bottles can be purchased (in Paris at least), but let me go there first... Public price here : 15 Euro.
__Mercurey la Brigadière 2007. Half-hectare Vineyard on a soil composed with white (Oxfordian) marls and debris. Very clear Pinot Noir, compared with the Couchois. Very complex and beautiful. Floral notes. B. feels chocolate too. Nice chew. Minerality edging on salinity. Second harvest of this vineyard. What he likes in this Mercurey is this graciousness. Public price : 18 Euro. Speaking of his cuvées, he made for example 11 cuvées from 6 hectares in 2007, that's why he has so many wooden tronconic open-vats compared with the small size of the estate. In 2008, having sold the Couchois (3 cuvées there) and purchased an additional Côte Chalonnaise, they made 9 cuvées. Speaking of this Mercurey, he says that his Les-Gardes plot on the Côte Chalonnaise has exactly the same type of soil. What strikes him with the Mercurey wines is the extreme legibility of the terroir, a trait that is very strong in Burgundy he says, you literally read the terroir in the wine. The 11th-century Chateau de Couches (Couchois)Speaking of 2008 where terrible weather-conditions brought a strong push of diseases, I asked Alaion Hasard if with his biodynamic farming it was not too hard to handle these bursts of diseases in the vineyard. He says it was an exhausting year, especially that some of their vineyards were just converting from conventional farming to organic, which is an ordeal for a vineyard (some plots had been bought in 2006, other plots in 2008). they had to spend all the season in the vineyard, taking away damaged grapes and leaves and checking every vine all the time. Also he says that you need time to know a newly acquired vineyard and learn how to handle it, and they do their best to understand how their new plots respond. In 2008, Isabelle just took a week off in summer with the children and came back to continue this work with Alain.Then in november there was this reduction risk, with more work and frequent checks, in the cellar this time. He says that they'll remember 2008, for sure...
speaking of the copper sprayings, he uses very low doses and adds that an organic-farming research center, the SEDARB, which is based in Auxerre in Northern Burgundy is having research programs about minimum-dosage spraying and how low it is possible to go with still a good response of the plant. But this research is a bit late and he (and other organic pioneers) has been already using for 5-6 years fo the low copper-dosages that they are testing only now. Viticulture is the farming sector which is converting the fastest to organic in France, he says, and there was a 16% increase in the surfaces turning to organic last year. At the Champs de l'Abbaye, they joined the Ecocert certification. They had looked for the Demeter certification a few years ago but it was too costly, especially when they didn't have much money. Now he would like Ecocert to create a separate certification, independant from the usual biodynamie certification-structures. Also he says that part of what is taught as being Rudolf Steiner's biodynamie comes actually from Maria Thun teachings. Maria Thun was a gardener growing vegetables and some of her techniques may not apply to hardy plants like vines. Also he doesn't necessarily respect the fruit-days of the moon-calendar for the pruning of the vines because as there are only about 7 fruit-days per month, you need either to have many workers to do the pruning or start very early in the season, both ways being unpracticable. Also, the Steiner's model was based on a farm entity with all its diverse life, animals, multi-crop growing etc, which is rarely a reality today. Hamlet between Couches and Aluze (maybe les Vezeaux or Précelles) Nearly 75% of Alain & Isabelle Hasard's wines are exported. To Japan (oeno-connexion), the U.S. (Jon David Headrick), Ontario (from time to time, LCBO being a monopoly), Quebec (Maitre de Chai), also in many European countries, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Northern Europe... Les Champs de l'AbbayeAlain & Isabelle Hasard9 rue des Roches Pendantes71510 Aluzephone : +33 3 85 45 59 32fax : +33 3 85 45 59 32

Comments

[Bertrand]

A bit late i know, but best wishes to all for 2009 !

There's a funny thing that I just noticed about the satellite view of Aluze I linked to (top of the page): if you click 2 or 3 times to enlarge and mouse down the picture to look on the upper left of Aluze, you'll see what looks like a military jet and its condensation trails, caught on tape by the satellite picture...

[Michael Weiss]

What's the reason for the bass clef on the La Brigadieres?

[Lanoy Véronique]

Hello dears

je viendrai avec plaisir déguster vos vins au salon des vins Bio de Montpellier ...
et si non je viendrai vous embrasser à Aluze.
A bientôt,
Véro