Jacky Preys' Fié Gris (Loire)

Jacky Preys in his Fié-Gris vineyardMeusnes (Touraine, loire)
This story is about a grape variety, a distant cousin of the Sauvignon named Fié Gris, which survived disappearance thanks to a serie of improbable circumstances, luck, and thanks to the steady will on a single vigneron of the Loire, Jacky Preys.
The Loire had long ago many more grape varieties grown side by side than today. There was no vignerons growing only grapes then, but farmers growing different crops including grapes, and doing farm animals together. The empirical wisdom helped the farmers determine which grape to grow where, and what use to make of the juice. This was before two earthquakes brought havoc in this diversity landscape dotted by real farms : The Phyloxera and the Appellation rules.
The phyloxera destroyed the vineyards at the end of the 19th century and after the disaster, farmers had to replant hastily in an era when wine consumption in fast-growing France was increasing rapidly. Having to build a vineyard from scratch, they disregarded the empirically chosen variety of the past and resorted to plant higher-yield, newly-selected grape varieties to let the wine-tap flow again. the second disaster for the minor varieties was the newly-created Appellation system and rules which came later and edicted which variety could be blended in this and that Loire Appellation. The minor varieties like Menu Pineau, Fié Gris and others were not aknowledged for their particular qualities and weren't given a place in this Appellation system, which was designed, it has to be said, by the major players of the industry. in Touraine for example, Sauvignon and Chardonnay had the lead role among white varieties, and the rest were simply ignored. From then on, many vignerons just uprooted their own minor varieties to grow the recognized, marketable ones (with the Appellation-sanctionned label) while others, by tradition, inertia, or because they would just blend the juice from the minor varieties with the Sauvignon and the Chardonnay, kept a few blocks here and there. But with the successive generations of growers and occasional replantings, they eventually faded away.

Pouring Fié Gris in the chai He's the man behind the resurrection of the Fié Gris. Jacky preys is just back from 3 days of deliveries in Paris, he drove his van full of wine cases and visited some 30 + customers, restaurants and wine shops, renewing personnal contacts with the restaurant owners and sharing occasionally a dish and a glass of wine with them, a vigneron's Parisian night-life, sort of. He drove back this night and didn't really sleep. He says that delivering personnally his wines in Paris is an important part of his job and he's been doing it since 40 years (since 1965 actually, every week), in addition to the work at the winery. This way he can also have the few late-paying customers end up paying their bills, and he likes this contact with his customers. A few years ago he would even play saxophone in a couple of these restaurants, here is a man full of resources...He also finds new customers during these Paris trips : there's a funny story for example on how he met the man who became his importer to Japan, at 2am in a restaurant (Fernandise, rue de la Fontaine au Roi). This was 25 years ago, he was delivering this restaurant near Republique in Paris, and there was a single customer in these late hours, who had been served a bottle of Jacky Preys' wine with his dinner. The owner hailed the patron, who happened to be a Japanese, saying "here is the vigneron who made the wine you're drinking". The guy was surprised and didn't believe it at first (a winery owner delivering himself at 2am !) and Jacky Preys showed him his ID to prove it was not a joke. He didn't speak much French but showed that he was happy with the wine, they both had a couple of glasses and he ended up saying in a broken French that he was interested to buy him wine because he was actually a wine importer to japan...That was a coincidence, especially that he was eating in this venue for the first time. Two or three weeks later the Japanese importer dropped at the winery to visit as if to check if this all was for real, he tasted more wines and he has ben importing Jacky Preys's wines since then.
Mr Yoshio Ito [interview in French] is heading oeno-connexion, which specializes in French artisan and natural wines.Tender shoot of a survivorSo, how did this Fié Gris discovery take place ? It began in the early 1980s', Jacky Preys was looking for more vineyards as there was a high demand for his wines. His then-25-hectare vineyards were mostly around his winery and home in Meusnes (in Touraine), a terroir well-known for its flintstone (silex) soil, and there was no other vineyard for sale there at the time. He heard about a big farm with vineyards in Mareuil-sur-Cher, a village 15 km away [where Clos Roche Blanche is located] who had problems selling their wines and had let their vineyards to willing vignerons like himself. The family Cuvelier had some 50 hectares of vineyards there in Mareuil and Jacky Preys began for two years to rent some of them to make wine, mostly Sauvignon, and also Gamay and Cabernet. Two years later, the owners, who were wealthy farmers with many more properties, including in Bordeaux, said that they wanted to get rid of the vineyard-part of their property in Mareuil (they had also some 300 hectares of non-vineyard land there). Jacky Preys decided to buy the whole 50 hectares, which included the facility and buildings, and he kept also the staff along. From one year to the next, he jumped from 25 hecares to 70 and that was a challenge during several years. Checking a Fié-Gris vine on his Meusnes vineyardsNow, as harvest nears on his newly-purchased vineyards (this took place around the mid 80s'), he stops at a 3-hectare block of very old vines which was part of the deal and which the seller had said was a not-clearly-identified white variety. Being mostly interested in the white-variety part of this vineyard purchase, he had the bad surprise to see that the grapes weren't white but rosy, almost red. He was a bit upset and asked about it to the staff who had been working here for years. They said that even though the skin looked almost red, the inside was white, so they were making white wine with this variety and blended it with the Sauvignon. A red blended with a white, that sounded weird for Jacky Preys, but at the press stage he saw that the juice was indeed white, so he did like they always had done here and blended it with the other whites. But he kept a vat of this juice on the side and later offered the resulting wine to taste to friends and visitors, and everybody was saying that's good, where does it come from ?. Piqued by the curiosity, he called the INAO [sorry for the poorly-designed website], the Appellation administration who didn't have an answer either, so they called someone of ONIVINS to investigate. They called also a retired, knowledgeable former INAO specialist who came at the winery. The man was about 80 years old and knew quite a lot about the varieties, when he reached the vineyard plot, he said to Jacky Preys you have a gold mine here, adding : this is Fié Gris, this variety is supposed to have disappeared a century ago...The man said that this variety was very common in the past in the Loire valley, and when the Phyloxerra devastated the vineyards, it was usually not replanted because it was a low-yield variety and the urgency of the situation asked for higher-yields types. Fié-Gris vine on a silex-loaded soil (Meusnes)The owners who at the time in 1880 had about 100 hectares of vineyards had done the uncommon move to replant this small surface of Fié Gris, maybe to spare money on buying new vines, maybe by inertia, they had such a large property anyway...These Fié Gris vines were among the first to have been replanted and along the years and successive generations people had forgotten that this variety ever existed and the routine of blending this juice with the other whites allowed the plot to survive the standardization brought by the Appellation rules which limited dramatically the number of white varieties under AOC. Lots of hybrids had been replanted at the time,like 5453, 7000, Bacot, Oberlin and others high-yield grapes, and this is a miracle that this Fié Gris was spared. Jacky Preys thinks that the size of the property explains that, maybe also they weren't thinking only through commercial efficiency and business in this property, who knows ? Life is like that, and something which would have been judged as incompetent lax management a century ago turns to be at the origin of a priceless resurrection... Filling a glass of Fié Gris 08 from a vatAfter the expert discovered the origin of Jacky Preys's puzzling redish grape variety, the French wine-administration experts conducted initial studies and trials on his vines (it lasted 2 or 3 years) and asked him the authorization to study the genetics of the variety and select vines for further analysis. During another 15 years, viticulture experts came regularly to his Fié-Gris plot, selecting the best vines, beginning with maybe 300 vines that they marked the first year, then reviewing them year after year and reducing the number of selected vines to the very best to make a massal selection and include them in the French vine library, thus allowing vignerons wanting to plant Fié Gris to have access to the variety. At the very end of their following of the Fié-Gris plot, they had put down the marked vines to about 20 which were the best suited to be the base of future clone selections. Jacky Preys had at one point to sign them a document allowing them the use of the resulting grafts in their laboratory and vine conservatory.....When I visited recently, I tasted Fié Gris not only from the bottle but from two vats that are not ready for bottling yet. Fié Gris is a variety which is at the same time rich and fresh, vivid, and some of his plot add the minerality of the silex, which is quite concentrated on his Meusnes plots. I recently opened a Fié Gris 2002 and that's when I decided to buy more of it to let it age, and also to make a specific story on this grape variety. A bottle of Fié Gris costs about 5 Euro at the winery and this is a very good deal for a long-keep wine that tastes well in its youth. Jacky Preys uses wild yeasts for the fermentation and one of the two vats that I tasted was a bit lazy to finish its work, but he was optimist to have it ready later in the summer.A young grape of Fié GrisFié Gris not only has survived extinction, but it was readily available for use and replanting, of course where the powerful French Appellation authorities considered as appropriate, which is another question and may keep the variety under wraps. That's how Domaine Goisot (Hugues & Ghislaine) in Saint-Bris-le-Vineux in Burgundy had some of it planted on their property. Onivins is in charge of the question and nurseries have access to the variety to sell plants to the willing growers. Jacky Preys himself made massal selections to plant some more on his Meusnes terroir, taking thus the additionnal advantage of the sharp minerality of the soil. He took some wood from the best vines hat the experts had selected in Mareuil and grafted them on roots in Meusnes.
But this is not the end of the story, we were forgetting the slow mind of the French Appellations administration, the INAO : Jacky Preys says that they encountered the highest difficulties to have the variety included in the AOC-allowed list. It took a few more years and it was granted the status of "Cépage recommandé et améliorateur". There's a limit to this INAO generosity though : Fié Gris can be replanted by vignerons but in a proportion of no more than 10% of the existing surface of white varieties on the estate (what a nightmare for the INAO, I guess, if ancient indigenous varieties weren't minority varieties anymore...). And another unbelieveable thing is that you're not allowed to bottle it as a single-variety wine (I'm always puzzled by the self-shooting capacity of the French). The term Fié Gris by the way (the ancient name of the variety) was not fully recognized, and the prefered name for the authorities was Sauvignon Gris. Jacky Preys himself had problems with "les Fraudes" as the DGCCRF is dubbed (a French administration control body acting as some sort of wine & food police) because he had printed "Cuvée de Fié Gris" on the label. He answered to the DGCCRF agents that "as Fié Gris is not recognised as a variety, how can you reproach me to choose the name for this cuvée ???". Here is the man who brought back to life an ancient variety of the Loire, a gold mine to paraphrase the first INAO retired expert who discovered it, and he gets harrassed by the administration for making wine from it and alluding to its name... The fonctionnaires ended up by dropping the case but he felt the heat. He showed them a document dating from 1820 that he found saying that it was the best variety of the Loire then and that Bordeaux winemakers bought Fié-Gris wine in bulk to blend it with their reds and increase the richness of their Bordeaux... The press in the cellar in MeusnesAn interesting thing about Israel here : Jacky Preys made a trip to Israel with a group of farmers and vignerons in 1988 or 1989, invited by the Israeli government, to learn about new farm techniques. Being myslef back from Israel, this was interesting to learn how it was then. They were well taken care of and welcomed and stayed in a few kibbutzs. It looked very surprising at first, he says, the infrastructure looked under-developped, with these kibbutzs and collective farms in the middle of nowhere, it all looked very spartan, but on the other side the agriculture techniques were well in advance compared to France's. He remembers a particular kibbutz in a desert were they had begun to de-salinize the sandy soil, bringing humus to change the nature of the soil, and also he saw in this country for the first time a dripping system, something mostly unheard of in France then. The working and retribution system in the kibbutzs was still a pioneer one then, very egalitarian and spartan, there was for example a single car in a kibbutz they visited and each kibbutzim had a single day or half-day per month to use it for himself... According to Jacky, only this collective system could have allowed the early valorisation of the land, this was such an amount of work that hardly any private player could have done the early hard work. About the wine then, it that was not very good, to be frank, he said. tHe vineyard was surprising, "taillée en corne de cerf", that is looking a bit unkempt and un pruned, canesgoing up in all directions. They used a tonnelle training, a sort of foliage roof to protect the grapes, but there were too many grapes per vine, which was one of the the reason for the poor quality of the wine. He remembers that it was a kibbutz and that it was exporting already but doesn't remember the name of the place.Domaine Jacky PreysLe Bois Pontois41130 Meusnesphone +33 2 54 71 00 34fax +33 2 54 71 34 91contact [at] domainepreys [dot] comwww.domainepreys.com

Comments

[Fred Schilling]

Another superb vignette, Bert. Your musings are always a great read (not too mention the excellent snaps) and bring the people, places and events to life.

Many thanks
Fred
P.S. The dates displayed on some recent entries appear to be getting slightly ahead of time!

[hikalu]

Jacky prays wine is one of the nice wines that I like.
I've met Mr Ito several times. He is a passionate wine importer. I think He is kind and friendly. He is a kind of father of my favorite wine shop owner in Yokohama.

[Jim Budd]

Really excellent article, Bertrand. It is good to see that a few producers, like Paul Buissé, the Bourgeois and Eric Chevallier in the Pays Nantais have this variety.

[Craig Heffley]

I've had the opportunity to enjoy Jacky's Fie Gris, and enjoyed it very much. Reminded me of a Pouilly-Fume with a touch of honey and floral boost. I also visited Domaine Goisot in 1997 and was knocked out by their fantastic Fie Gris. I enjoyed it so much, that we brought a bottle to Didier Dageauneau who we were visiting later in the week to get his opinion. He was already familiar with it, and had already considered planting some in his "Meteor" vineyard of ungrafted vines. Not sure if he ever did though. Thanks for the great story, and a revisit to those memories.
- Craig Heffley www.wineauthorities.com

[Craig Heffley]

Asteroid vineyard from Dageuneau, not Meteor.

[Bertrand]

Thanks Fred, I'm doing my best, but the subject is rich by itself and photogenic ! Thank you also for the display bug (I had seen that before but thought it would wind back by itself).

Hi Hikalu. I met Mr Ito a couple of times over several years but very shortly, seems an interesting man.

Thank you for the tip, Jim, I didn't know about who grew Fié Gris these days outside of the Goisots in St-Bris in Burgundy.

Craig : That's utmost interesting, I'd like to know if Dagueneau made initial moves to plant Fié Gris in his vineyards. I will try to know if a young vineyard is on its way with this variety. The guy was doing so many things at the same time, he may have found time to root this project, and this lost-variety resurrection was the type of thing he would relate well with...

[Chris Kissack]

The problem with dates may explain why I couldn't comment on this excellent article when I first read it several days ago. A fascinating read, Bertrand, many thanks.

[Chris DeBarr]

There are also very old pre-phylloxera cuttings of Fie Gris from Chile, where it goes by the Sauvignon Gris name. I noticed that UC-Davis, the best viticultural university in USA, offers to share cuttings of Jacky's vines, those in Burgundy you mention, and 3 old Chilean cuttings.

I've adored Preys' gorgeous wine for almost a decade, and one aspect of the wine I especially adore is the wonderful aromatic quality of Cuvée de Fie Gris.